Dec. 30, 2022 A 27-year-old mechanic saved 10 people and as many as 24 when he broke into a Cheektowaga school to find shelter for a group of strangers, leaving a note to apologize for the damage.
By Jonathan D. Epstein Source The Buffalo News, N.Y. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A 27-year-old Kenmore mechanic is being lauded as a hero for saving at least 10 and as many as 24 lives during the height of the weekend blizzard by breaking into a Cheektowaga school to find shelter for himself and a group of strangers whose vehicles were stuck in the snow nearby.
After Jay Withey Jr.’s car got stuck Dec. 23 on Preston Road, he said he knocked on the doors of 15 homes to find shelter, but the scared residents declined.
“My muscles are cramping, my eyes are fogging up, and my vision’s going black. It was super scary. I’m terrified at this point,” he recalled.
After taking a stranded child and an elderly woman into his truck overnight, and then running out of gas by morning, Withey Jr. trudged Christmas Eve morning to the nearby Pine Hill Primary Center school, where he broke a classroom window, climbed inside and opened a door to the heated building on East Delavan Avenue.
He went back to get his two passengers, but also went from car to car gathering up other stranded motorists and bringing them inside, where they would spend the next 24 hours huddled together as the wind howled and the snow blew. They ate the school’s frozen pizza, cereal packs and apples, using only what food, water and medicine they needed from the cafeteria and nurse’s office. Then they dug each other’s cars out on Christmas Day.
“He’s an incredible young man,” said Robert Holzman, 48, a corrections officer at the Orleans Correctional Facility in Albion, who was part of the group Withey helped. He was driving back to Buffalo with a lieutenant from the prison, Sabrina Andino, when their car got stuck two vehicles behind Withey’s. “He’s a hero in my book.”
The survivors even boarded up the school window that Withey broke to get inside, cleaned and put away dishes or pans they had used, and cleaned up the tables. They had pulled the smart boards out of the classrooms so they could watch the news for updates, but put them back and plugged them in before they left.
Withey even left a handwritten note for the school and police, to apologize for breaking in and using school resources. And he stayed behind to help others in the neighborhood around the school who had lost power in their homes, taking them in as well.
“Before we left, I wanted to make sure everything was back where it was, that we weren’t disrespectful of the building,” Withey said. “I didn’t want to overuse anything, didn’t want to cook any food that wasn’t necessary.”
Meanwhile, a keyholder from the school had received an alert about broken glass on Friday night, but Cheektowaga police couldn’t respond because of the deteriorating weather. When they were finally able to check the building days later, an officer initially thought the damage to the window was caused by the hurricane-force winds because “nothing seemed out of place,” the officer wrote on Facebook. Then he found Withey’s note.
“To Whomever It May Concern: I’m terribly sorry about breaking the school window and for breaking in the kitchen. Got stuck at 8 p.m. Friday and slept in my truck with two strangers. Just trying not to die. There were 7 elderly people also stuck and out of fuel. I had to do it to save everyone and get them shelter and food and a bathroom. Merry Christmas. Jay.”
The police were stunned. “We watched the video surveillance and witnessed people taking care of people,” the police posted. “There was a freezer full of food but no one touched it. They only ate what was necessary to stay alive. … When they were finally able to leave safely, you never would have known anyone was there.”
Neither Erie 1 BOCES nor the Cheektowaga Central School District want to press charges, nor are the police filing any. Instead, they plan to honor Withey for his actions.
“The selflessness that people showed to help others during the storm is what WNY is really made of,” the Cheektowaga Police Department posted on its Facebook page after officers found the note and watched the school’s surveillance video. “This group of amazing people took care of each other and the building they found shelter in.”
“If I didn’t have all these people backing me up, it’s just something you’d never believe,” Withey said. “I’m just glad there are no charges, but I had to do what I had to do.”
What ended as a Christmas miracle and story of selflessness had started out two days earlier with frustration, uncertainty and eventually outright fear, as a once-in-a-generation blizzard set upon Buffalo and its suburbs with a fury no one had experienced before.
Withey was at home in Kenmore on Friday morning, when a friend called him for help because he was stuck in his truck in Cheektowaga with his girlfriend and a dog. Withey set out to help, but encountered gridlock on Harlem Road. That’s when he saw a child walking on the street with sneakers on.
Withey took the boy into his truck for safety, but then they got stuck at Erb Street and Lang Avenue, just above Genesee Street. He turned around, got back to East Delavan, turned right, and got stuck at Preston Road. This time, he wasn’t going anywhere.
And he was down to a quarter-tank of gas, as it started to get late.
“Now I’m nervous about not having enough gas, not being able to make it through the night,” he said. “The snow is just piling up on the passenger side. I’m getting nervous that we’re going to be stranded.”
He told Mike to stay in the truck while he went and knocked on the doors of 15 homes nearby, to see if they could find shelter. He even offered them $500 from his wallet, but the scared residents declined. Meanwhile, the biting wind and blinding snow were affecting him, and he couldn’t see where he was going or where he came from, because his footprints were buried.
He made it back to the truck to warm up. Around 11:30 p.m., a woman from the car behind him, Mary Ross, knocked on his window. He helped her into the back of the truck, and they spent the night inside, turning the vehicle on and off to keep up the heat while conserving fuel. But by Saturday morning, he was out of gas. Ross still had an eighth of a tank of gas, so the three of them switched vehicles. But she started to panic.
Withey saw on his map that the school was nearby, and figured it was heated and would have food. He recruited a driver from another car, Antonio DeAmillio, grabbed a set of extra brake pads lying in the front of his truck, trudged to the school, and smashed a window to get in. They propped the front door open, got Mary and Mike inside, and then started going from car to car to get others, including Holzman and Andino, who were also running out of gas.
Once inside, they found the cafeteria but the kitchen was locked. Withey used a table to pry open the doors, crawled through the opening, and unlocked the door. The group — now numbering about 14 — grabbed apple juice, fruit punch, apples, cereal and water.
Meanwhile, the burglar alarm was going off in the building. Withey found the keypad, searched around before figuring out where the combination was written, and deactivated it. He also found the building’s master key, which he used to unlock the nurse’s office and the gym, so that the survivors could get blankets and floor mats to sleep on that night.
Over the course of the weekend, Withey went back out with a couple of other people, walking up and down the street to rescue others and bring them back inside. They checked all the cars, fearful of finding bodies, and also took in people from the adjacent neighborhood overnight who had lost power or heat. In all, he estimates 24 people spent some time in the school over the weekend.
By Saturday evening, Withey decided to try to use the school’s snowblower — with an enclosed cab — to clear the vehicles. But the weather turned bad again, so he abandoned the plan until Sunday morning, when the storm cleared up. That’s also when a 31-year-old childhood friend of Withey’s, Nate Abston, turned up with his own four-wheel drive truck to help for several hours, after being unable to get there during the storm.
After freeing the school parking lot, the group used ropes and chains to pull the other vehicles out of the snow and into the school lot and another one just up the road, so they were off the street. By mid-afternoon, everyone was able to leave. Withey even went to get gas for Ross’ car, while Abston gave Holzman a ride home since his car wouldn’t start. Andino was able to walk home.
The group went their separate ways, but set up a group text chat on their phone. They’re planning to meet up for a summer barbecue.
We were all from different races and backgrounds and cultures, and we all just bonded. We’re going to be friends for life,” Holzman said. “We all chipped in. it was like a family right off the bat. There was no arguing. We all did something and we all helped out. It was amazing.”