Opens angler helps stranded motorists

Larry Draughn served his country in Afghanistan and continues to serve those in need back at home.

If you follow the Bassmaster Opens series, you may already be familiar with Larry Draughn. Larry is a double amputee and a veteran of Afghanistan, but that doesn’t stop him from competing in the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Opens. This past weekend, he did something else that, despite his protests, was pretty heroic:

A local couple say he’s a hero — but Larry Draughn said he was just doing what he hoped anyone would.

“I didn’t want to see anybody stranded on the side of that road, it wasn’t safe,” said Draughn, a Marine veteran who lost both his legs four years ago in Afghanistan after a roadside bomb exploded just two weeks into his deployment.

During Sunday’s snow storm, he used his pickup truck to pull three unlucky drivers out of a ditch at the side of an icy stretch of Regina Drive.

“It was a sheet of ice and people kept going into the ditches behind my house,” Draughn, 26, said. But Draughn was sure about one thing, “I wouldn’t call it heroic.”

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