A woman’s life was saved thanks to the careful eye of a passing trucker in Robert, Louisiana.
At around 7 a.m. on Tuesday, an unnamed Walmart truck driver noticed that a bridge railing on Highway 190 at Washley Creek was smashed up.
When the driver saw the damage, he inspected the scene for signs of a crash. The trucker immediately called for help when he realized the situation. A woman was trapped in her overturned car that was partially submerged in a creek.
Firefighter Dennis Pitts acknowledged, “He just happened to see it over there and that’s when he stopped, got out and went and checked on it and heard somebody in there.”
Pitts explained, “When I got to her, the car wasn’t completely underwater, but most of her body was.”
He continued,
“She was underwater from her neck up with her chin sticking up trying to breathe. She had a little bit of stuff on top of her from in the car where it had flipped and she was laying on the roof and all that was out of the water was from chin up.”
According to officials, the crash that ended with her in this position started when she hit a guardrail. That impact sent her smashing into another guardrail, which she then toppled over and landed upside-down into the canal below.
The woman told rescuers that she thought the crash occurred around 10:30 p.m., but a resident told officials that she heard a crash around 2 a.m. Either way, the woman was trapped in her car for several hours, holding her head above water as she struggled to breathe to stay alive.
WWLTV reported that firefighters rushed to the scene, forced open the door and carried her to safety. The woman told rescuers that she thought she was going to die.
One firefighter commented on the foresight of the truck driver who noticed the incident. He stated, “if the truck hadn’t been so tall, and he hadn’t been looking to see what was going on, probably would have been a lot worse turn out on this.”
The woman was taken to a hospital with minor injuries. The crash remains under investigation.
