Shocking video footage captured heroic Utah students lifting a car to rescue a school employee and his young children trapped beneath it outside their school.
Layton Christian Academy staff member Bridgette Ponson was leaving work with her children Tuesday afternoon when a driver struck them while he was temporarily blinded by sunlight, authorities said.
Surveillance showed how a stream of at least 20 students ran to lift the car to free Ponson and her children, her 2-year-old son Archer and 3-year-old daughter Brightley.
“I hear all these commotions, people telling me, ‘Come help, come help!’ so I dropped my stuff and ran,” sophomore Theo Roach told KSL-TV.
“We all got together and started lifting that car,” said Roach, who heard international students shout “Lift” in several different languages at the private school.
“I looked under the car and the baby was lying there,” another hero student, Utulei Simaumea, an eighth grader, told the outlet.
Layton Christian Academy’s surveillance camera captured the heroic rescue. Mom Bridgette Ponson was rescued along with her 2-year-old son Archer and her 3-year-old daughter Brightley.
“And the mom said, ‘Help! Aid! Help!’” Simaumea said. “I was shocked and immediately said to myself, ‘Think of Mom.’ I said, ‘What would a person do for your mom?’”
The school’s executive director, Chris Crowder, recalled his pride at how “all these kids from different countries come running and pick it up.”
“Girls, boys, it didn’t matter, everyone just took a place in the car and lifted it.”
The students said they felt the adrenaline. “I feel like we probably don’t look like the type of people who would be able to lift the car, but we did it,” Roach said.
Every few seconds, more and more students could be seen rushing to lift the sedan.
As the children got up, a senior Air Force airman who was at the school to pick up his children helped carry out the mother and children, who admitted he feared they were doomed.
“I thought, ‘Hey guys, let’s get the car high enough so we can get the kids out,'” Airman Dominique Childress told Fox 13.
The 3-year-old girl was able to crawl out and Childress was able to save the baby who was in her mother’s arms, who was rescued about 15 seconds later.
Although baby Archer was unconscious and had a purple face, his rescuer soon found a pulse.
He was airlifted to a hospital, but does not appear to have broken any bones or suffered serious injuries, a miraculous outcome shared by his sister.
Mom and her children survived after the students lifted the car they were trapped under.
His mother suffered the brunt of the injuries while cradling her young son to protect him and is expected to need several surgeries, his school said.
“It’s a miracle,” Crowder, the school’s executive director, told KSL.
“I’m so proud of our kids…the kids just ran and without even having to be told what to do, they just knew what to do.”
Childress also said that even though he was the one in uniform, the children were the real heroes.
Bridgette suffered the brunt of the injuries and is expected to undergo several surgeries, but all three victims are expected to survive.
“They are the purest form of the word ‘hero’ and they deserve all the praise and adoration they have received because what they did was not easy for a teenager,” he said.
Police are still investigating the crash and it is unclear if the driver will face any charges.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn