New Jersey State Trooper Daniel Cunning was on duty when a hurricane made landfall in New Jersey for only the third time in two centuries.
Fighting ferocious winds and stinging rain, Cunning would save a life and lose a life in the darkness of the same flooded road.
Twenty-year-old Celena Sylvestri was driving along Route 40 just before 1 a.m. Sunday. The small stream that ran along the road had risen, and Sylvestri had driven into it.
Cunning was one of three troopers and a firetruck crew to rush to the scene. He looked around frantically. Nothing.
“I was looking for a person, or vehicle, or anything at that point,” he said.
At dawn, a swift-water rescue diver was brought in and located Sylvestri’s car, submerged below 4 feet of water. Her body was recovered.
On the other side of Route 40, 68-year-old James Troy made the same mistake and drove into the rushing water. His truck was quickly washed down into woods, and he was washed out of the truck.
As Cunning looked for Sylvestri, the report came in about a man in the water, who by then was clinging to a tree.
Cunning ran back to the firetruck, tied a 70-foot rope to his waist and began wading into the deep water.
“I thought it was going to knock me down,” the 6-foot-3-inch trooper said.
He called out and heard an answer.
Once they spotted Troy, Cunning said, they tried to throw him a life preserver. It didn’t work.
So the firetruck drove further into the water with Cunning still attached. Eventually, the trooper, a former lifeguard, was able to swim out to rescue Troy.
