AN off-duty nurse saved the life of a teenager trapped in a burning car following a crash.

Carole Goulden pulled the 17-year-old girl from the vehicle moments before it exploded at Sunniside, on the border of County Durham and Gateshead, in the early hours of Saturday.

The girl is now in hospital with serious injuries, but doctors are hopeful she will recover.

Ms Goulden, a staff nurse for 11 years, was travelling back from a wedding party at Beamish Hall, in Beamish, near Stanley, with her friends, fellow nurses Carly Byrne and Helen Yeung.

They were driving along the A6076 just before 1am when they came across the aftermath of the accident, near the Potter’s Wheel pub.

A car traveling north, with an 18-year-old man and two 17-year-old girls inside, had collided headon with two other vehicles, bursting into flames.

The man, who was understood to be the driver, and his front-seat passenger, thought to be his girlfriend, had escaped the car before the nurses arrived.

But the second girl, who was in the back of the car, was unconscious.

Ms Goulden, 33, of Killingworth, North Tyneside, said: “We were one of the first on the scene.

“We all got out to see if we could help.

“Carly and Helen were seeing to the other two youngsters and they started screaming that someone was still inside.

“I didn’t even think about what I was doing, I walked over to the car.

“The door was open and I could see she looked in a bad way. I lifted her out because the bonnet was on fire.

“We’d just got away when it all went up in flames.”

Ms Goulden stayed with the girl, giving her first aid, until the ambulance arrived.

She said: “She looked badly injured. I just tried to keep talking to her.”

Northumbria Police said all three teenagers are in a serious but stable condition in hospital and their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

The occupants of the other cars – a 62-year-old woman, a 63-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman – escaped uninjured.

Police have appealed for witnesses to the accident to call 03456-043-043, extension 69191.