Firefighters in South Los Angeles said they had to physically fight a man off after he attacked a firetruck in a caught-on-camera confrontation.

A Station 16 firefighter was on its way to respond to a crash when the man suddenly climbed aboard the fire engine.

“We were literally responding to a traffic collision and this guy just came out of nowhere, jumped in front of the engine and just started punching it,” said Andrew Chaing, a firefighter/paramedic who was in the truck at the time of the incident.