Good Samaritan who helped woman in car accident was Patriots player

New England Patriots linebacker Darius Fleming played in Saturday's AFC Divisional round win over the Kansas City Chiefs with 22 stitches in his leg. Fleming injured himself in the days before the game, when he saw an accident on Route 1, the major roadway that takes players and fans to and from Gillette Stadium, and stopped when he thought one of the women involved was in distress.

Fleming explained the situation to reporters on Wednesday:

"I was driving home from here, just left treatment. [I was] on Route 1 and the lady – there was a semi [truck] four cars ahead of me. Three cars were in-between and the semi made a real sudden stop, made a right turn, and it kind of threw the three cars behind it off so the lady in front of me couldn’t stop. She rammed the car in front of her. That car continued to ram the car in front of it and I was about to go around it but I noticed that the lady in front of me – she kind of was jumping around the car, passenger seat, back seat.

"Then I noticed the car started to smoke and I didn’t really think much of it. I just thought she was trying to get out of the car then I realized the smoke was building up inside of the car so I was like ‘You know what, I probably should get out of here and try to assist her a little bit.’ I tried to open the doors. It wouldn’t work so then I was just like ‘I’ve got to get her out of here because I don’t know if this lady can breathe or what.’ I started banging on the window. It wouldn’t break so then I just started kicking the window.

"Eventually it broke. I pulled her out and made sure she was OK. At this time a lady was coming out of the adjacent building and was assisting her, so I noticed my leg was bleeding pretty bad so I was like ‘I probably should get out of here.’ [I] came back here, got it bandaged up a little bit and then went to the hospital and they did the rest of the work."

At the hospital, Fleming, a fifth-round pick of the San Francisco 49ers in 2012 who joined the Patriots in 2014, had some glass removed from his leg and got the stitches. He played a reserve role on defense as well as his usual role on special teams against Kansas City.

As it turned out, the smoke Fleming believed was filling the woman's car was not from a fire but from the air bag deploying. But police acknowledged that to the untrained eye, it would look like smoke.

The woman Fleming helped said her car lost power, which led to her being unable to get out. Fleming kicked in the window of passenger's side door and helped her climb out the window. She did not know the Good Samaritan was a Patriots player.