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 SALT LAKE COUNTY, Utah — It was a case of being at the right place at the right time for a Unified Fire crew who helped to save a woman being strangled in an underpass along Interstate 80 near Parley’s Canyon Friday night. 
 
 "I would say it's pretty heroic even though we don't like to use those terms, these guys stepped in when they didn't have to, and made a massive impact on someone's life," said Eric Holmes, spokesman for Unified Fire Authority. 
 
 The Unified Fire crew just happened to be driving underneath the 1-80 eastbound overpass, at exit 131, returning from a grass fire, when they saw a car sitting in the middle of the tunnel. A man was outside the vehicle, assaulting a woman with a rope. 
 
 "Fire authorities saw the female with the rope wrapped around her neck and he was in the process of trying to hoist her up and strangle her,” said Sgt. Randy Riches, of the Utah Department of Public Safety. 
 
 When the suspect, 22-year-old Juan Echevesta, saw the firefighters he tried to force the woman into the passenger seat. The four firefighters knew they didn't have time to call police. 
 
 "They felt if they were to allow the vehicle to travel down the road with her in it that her life would come to an end very shortly,” Riches said. 
 
 So the first responders did what they do best, they responded. 
 
 "Firefighters were in fear that her life was in danger so they quickly rushed the car and restrained the male driver,” Riches said. 
 
 The Department of Public Safety says the firefighters acted on instinct and that was enough to save this woman's life. 
 
 "Not something they are trained to do, it's not something they practice in, but they have that instinct in them because they are first responders and they sign up for the job for a reason,” Riches said. 
 
 Echevesta is facing charges of attempted murder and aggravated kidnapping. The Department of Public Safety said that the victim and suspect know each other but they wouldn't go into detail regarding the nature of that relationship. 
 
 Echeveste faces a first-degree felony charge of attempted murder and a first-degree felony charge of aggravated kidnapping. ||||| PARLEYS CANYON, Utah, July 5, 2016 (Gephardt Daily) — A weekend dispatch call that sent firefighters up Parleys Canyon in search of a phantom fire may have saved a woman from murder by hanging. 
 
 Four Unified Fire Authority firefighters could not find the reported smoke on Friday, so picked a random exit off Interstate 80 to turn their vehicle around. 
 
 They exited at milepost 131, and noticed a car “awkwardly positioned,” and blocking the road, according to Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Randy Riches. 
 
 The firefighters reported that they noticed a man and woman nearby, and saw the man was pulling on a rope around the woman’s neck, as if to hang her. The other end of the rope was strung up and over a metal pipe, and the woman was crying and pulling at the rope as it constricted her neck. 
 
 The man reportedly saw the firefighters, and forced the woman into his car. The firefighters rushed the vehicle and restrained the man until Utah Highway Patrol troopers arrived and made an arrest. 
 
 Juan Echeveste Alba, 22, of Salt Lake City, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and aggravated kidnapping. 
 
 The woman told officer that Echeveste-Alba has tried to hurt her in the past, and once tried to strangle her, cutting off her air supply to the point that she said she saw white dots.
– Firefighters were expecting to find, well, flames. Instead, they discovered a man attempting to hang a woman beneath an overpass near Utah's Parleys Canyon on Friday, police say. A four-man crew responding to a report of smoke at the mouth of the canyon around 8pm found nothing troubling, so they "picked a random exit off Interstate 80 to turn their vehicle around," reports Gephardt Daily. There, they found their way blocked by a car "awkwardly positioned" beneath the underpass, says Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Randy Riches. A short distance away, they spotted a man pulling "a rope tied around the female's neck and strung from a pipe about 15 feet in the air on the side of the structure," Riches tells KSL. "The female was crying and attempting to grab at the rope that was around her neck," according to a jail report. The man then took the woman to his car in an attempt to avoid the firefighters, but "they didn't hesitate, they rushed right in," says Riches. The firefighters got the woman out of the car and into their fire engine and held the suspect until police arrived, he says. Juan Echeveste Alba, 22, of Salt Lake City, has since been charged with attempted murder and aggravated kidnapping. His relationship to the victim—who was treated for only minor cuts and bruises—is unclear, per Fox 13, though the woman told investigators that Alba had tried to hurt her previously and once cut off her air supply until she saw dots. "I guess it's better to be lucky than good sometimes," says a United Fire Authority rep. "Had it not been for the smoke call and had they gone one more exit, they never would have found her."