A HERO from York saved two elderly women when their car careered off the A64 and landed on its roof in a stream.

Warren Lill, 36, was driving on the A64 towards York, with his pregnant girlfriend, when a car driven by an 81-year-old woman veered across the road, narrowly missing him before overturning and ending up in the stream near Stockton-on-the-Forest.

Mr Lill, of Dringhouses , said the two women were minutes from drowning when he got to them after the accident, just before noon on Monday.

He said: “I was driving in the opposite lane and the car veered into my lane coming straight towards me. I missed it by about two feet. I saw it in my mirror go off the road and into the stream.”

Mr Lill stopped his car and ran to the upturned Renault Clio car, which he said had landed in about four feet of water. He said: “The driver was in imminent danger of drowning – she was trying to keep her head out of the water.

“I was the first one there but then two other guys turned up.

“I tried to kick in the window, but I had trainers on and my foot just kept bouncing off. One of the men had a tyre wrench and he put the window through with it.”

Between them the three men managed to free the women from their seat belts and Mr Lill carried them to safety on the bank of the stream before the emergency services arrived.

Mr Lill, who runs Bucket Heads Window Cleaning Services in York, said: “Bless them, they had to have been well into their eighties.

“I put them down and kept one of them with their head still in case they had back injuries.

“They just kept saying ‘thank you’ and asking what would have happened if I had not been there.”

The driver of the car was 81 and suffered a cracked sternum and bruising. Her passenger, aged 87, suffered bruising.

The women, who were from Wakefield, were both taken to York Hospital and discharged on Monday.

Group manager Ian Hill, from York Fire Station, was one of the first of the emergency services to arrive at the scene.

He said: “Hats off to the guys for doing what they did. This is a pair of very lucky ladies. If the stream had been in flood this could have been a very different story.”

Meanwhile, Mr Lill said he hopes to meet again with the two friends he rescued.

“I would like to meet up with them over a cup of tea,” he said.

North Yorkshire Police said they were investigating the accident but did not require any more witnesses.