A group of high school students in a town just north of Salt Lake City, Utah, are being lauded as heroes after they worked together to lift a car that had run over a mother and her two children.
The dramatic rescue, which took place Tuesday in the parking lot of Layton Christian Academy, was captured on surveillance video. The footage showed dozens of students surrounding the car and lifting it up as more teens rushed over to help.
The mother was with her three-year-old daughter and two-year-old son when they were run over by a car in the school’s parking lot, local broadcaster KSLTV reports. The three-year-old girl was able to free herself from underneath the car while the mother and son remained trapped.
In a video interview with KSLTV, the associate pastor and CEO of the school, Chris Crowder, said that he noticed the crash and called for help.
“I looked across the parking lot and noticed the car and they were screaming and so I ran over there and I look under the car and I see mom and child underneath the car, pinned,” Crowder said.
“It was a split second. I immediately just ran into the building because I knew I had to get a lot of people to lift this car.”
Crowder notes that Layton Christian Academy is comprised of about 220 domestic students and over 300 international students.
“They just heard me yell. All these kids from different countries,” he said. “Girls, boys, it didn’t matter. They just all took a spot in the car and lifted it.”
Crowder estimates that about 20 to 30 students aided in the effort to lift the car. They were able to get the vehicle about “an inch or two” off the ground when Dominique Childress, a parent who was there to pick up his child that day, pulled the mother and son free.
Childress is a senior airman from the nearby Hill Air Force Base. He told KSLTV that the mother was holding her son and shielding him underneath the car.
“Once we were holding the car high enough, she was able (to) get up and kind of hold the car on her back as we were lifting,” Childress said.
After pulling the family to safety, Childress observed that the two-year-old was unconscious and his face was “purple,” but he was still breathing.
The toddler was airlifted to a Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City and has since been released, school officials said. He miraculously did not sustain serious injuries.
The mother and her three-year-old daughter were both rushed by ambulance to a local hospital. The three-year-old was not seriously injured but her mother has been in and out of surgery since the crash. The mother is expected to survive, school officials added.
The mother was identified as Bridgette Ponson on a GoFundMe page seeking to raise money to help with the family’s hospital bills. The campaign has raised US$30,000 of its US$35,000 goal as of Friday afternoon.
An officer with Layton police told KUTV that the driver of the car, an adult woman, said she was blinded by the sun and didn’t see the mother and her two children crossing the road. The accident occurred around 3:45 p.m.
The driver is cooperating with the police investigation into the accident, Lt. Travis Lyman said. He added that the driver of the car helped lift up the vehicle during the dramatic rescue.
Crowder says he’s proud of the students at his school for helping to save the family’s life.
“The kids were heroes, as well as the gentleman that was there and pulled them out,” he said.
Childress echoed his sentiments, saying that the students represented “the purest form of the word hero.”
“They deserve every single bit of praise and worship that they’ve gotten because what they did was not easy for a teenager to do,” he said.