'All of a sudden I started smelling smoke': Woman recounts escaping from burning vehicle on Hwy. 401

A 32-year-old Hamilton woman says she is lucky to be alive after her car randomly caught fire while she was driving on Highway 401 last weekend.

Jamie Lee Kerri-Mitchell said that she had no idea there was anything amiss in the minutes before her vehicle went up in flames on the highway near Hamilton at around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday.

Video footage obtained by CTV News Toronto shows flames billowing from Kerri-Mitchell’s 2017 Hyundai Elantra moments after she escaped, with the help of an off-duty police officer and their wife.

“Everything was fine and I had just come off the off-ramp but then… I heard someone honk at me,” she recalled in an interview with CTV News Toronto on Monday.

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The mother of three said she initially thought they honked because she was driving too slowly and she proceeded to move over to the slow lane.

“All of a sudden I started smelling smoke,” she said. “My car within seconds just filled with black smoke and then I started feeling dizzy and my throat starting hurting.”

At that point, she said, she realized something was very wrong and proceeded to put on her four-ways and pull over to the shoulder of the road.

“(I) just remember sitting there for a second being like, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s happening?’”

“I was like in a state of shock. I didn’t know should I run? Should I stay? Is it big? Everything was just like going at once and then everything went blank.”

At one point, she said she began to feel heat underneath her feet.

“I did not expect the car to already be on fire,” she said, adding that she then noticed woman and a man, who she later learned was an off-duty police officer, running toward her vehicle.

“I didn’t want to go through the driver’s side because there were so many vehicles that were going high speeds so I thought I’d get out of the passenger’s (side).”

She said just as she was stumbling out of the passenger’s side door, the off-duty officer and his wife had arrived to help.

“I looked down and the whole bottom of my car is on fire… They grab me and they start running back,” Kerri-Mitchell said.

Within 30 seconds the car was fully engulfed in flames, she said.

“You could see the tires exploding, the battery exploding,” she said. “The car was just a crisp. There was nothing left.”

After speaking to witnesses, Kerri-Mitchell said she later learned that her car was on fire while she was on the ramp.

“The car underneath was on fire dripping plastic and that is why people I guess were honking, trying to warn me,” she said. “But I had no sign. I had no idea. I didn’t see smoke. My car was driving fine.”

She said she is grateful to those who tried to alert her to the fire, particularly the off-duty officer and his wife, who also had children in their car at the time of the incident.

“I want to thank them for coming and saving me and trying to warn me,” she said tearfully.

“If I would have been in there… I wouldn’t have made it and my kids would not have a mom.”

With files from CTV News Toronto’s Sean Leathong