A trucker who came across a serious wreck on Interstate 75 in Georgia says he did all he could for a little girl thrown from a vehicle, but that he doesn’t think his actions should be considered “heroic.”
On Thursday, May 10th, an SUV driven by 31-year-old Sonia Del Carmen Cabrera Benitez was traveling on I-75 in Henry County, Georgia when she overcorrected and lost control while making a lane change, sending the SUV crashing into a Nissan before veering back across the highway and flipping several times, throwing six children and three adults from the vehicle.
As soon as truck driver and military veteran Adam Bellinger saw the wreck, he knew he had to try to do something.
“I drove up there to see if there was anyone I could render aid to,” he said. That’s when he saw 10-year-old Angelica Ballinas laid out on the ground, looking to be in the worst shape of the nine people ejected from the wrecked vehicle.
“We were scared to perform CPR with blood coming out of without a breath mask eventually a breath mask was found,” Bellinger said to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“We did CPR on her for it felt an eternity. It was probably 10 to 15 minutes before an ambulance showed up, but we had already lost her pulse about five minutes in,” he continued.
Angelica was pronounced dead on scene, but the eight other passengers including the driver, 46-year-old Maria Rivas Quevedo, 11-year-old Christopher Grandados-Cabrera, 10-year-old Daira Grandados-Cabrera, 5-year-old Natalia Gonzalez-Cabrera, 16-year-old Esau Ballinas, 9-year-old Joselin Ballinas, and Enilsa Judith Revolorio Rivas, of an unspecified age- were all transported to a nearby hospital, some by helicopter.
Their current conditions are not known, but the driver of the Nissan struck by the SUV, who has not been identified, suffered only minor injuries in the crash and is known to be in good condition.
Bellinger says that the crash left an impact on him, but that he cant imagine the toll it has taken on the victims’ families.
“I just did the bare minimum of what anyone should do,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s heroic at all. I was just being a decent human being.”
