LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- There is a quick way to tell the story: A car and a van crashed at 15th and Jefferson Streets in Louisville Friday morning, sending several people to the hospital.
But to tell the whole story takes a little more time.
"America was in the street injured and trying to save itself," Justin Willis said.
Willis was driving to work Friday morning when he saw commotion on the road. As he drove closer, he saw there was an accident with a passenger van and car crashing into each other.
"I was able to tell there were plenty of people there," he said. "I could tell people were trying to help, that something horrible had just happened, and it was second nature as a photographer to grab a camera out of my trunk."
Armed with his camera, Willis started snapping photos showing dozens of people springing to action. Several people are shown holding up the van, which had rolled on its side, trapping people inside on top of one another. Others are shown providing first aid before emergency personnel arrived on scene.
"All these strangers, without concern or care, reached out to help their neighbors," Willis said. "And that was a pretty magical thing to witness and is worthy of sharing."
One of the people captured by Willis' lens was Kaitlyn Zawisa, who can be seen in dark blue scrubs. Zawisa said she arrived at the scene just as the van stopped skidding after the collision. She helped pull people out of the van and began treating their wounds.
"My first reaction honestly was there's got to be someway I can help because I know that this is someone's mom, daughter, brother, sister," she said. "This is someone that needs help."
"She was comforting people. She was trying to stop the blood," Willis said. "And when you look at these photos, she didn't have gloves on. And I think that sums up that none of these people had any internal debate about what they were going to do. That was the touching part to me."
Willis' Facebook post has already been shared more than 2,000 times, with many praising those like Zawisa for jumping in to help, but she said it was just the right thing to do.
"We're human. We're all human," she said. "It's crazy how we all fight and get into all this, but we just really need to be there and help people. And that's what it's really about."
It was a moment of disaster that turned strangers into neighbors, a small example of the goodness people are capable of. And that's the real story.