An organ donor successfully saved the life of at least one more person after their body helped weigh down a hearse that was dangerously close to sliding off the edge of a cliff in Colorado.
The body was being transported by Hubbard and Son’s funeral home services on the snowy night of Jan. 27 when the hearse went off the road between the town of Silverthorne, near Vail, and the Eisenhower Tunnel, reports Vail Daily.
CBS Colorado reports that the driver of the hearse switched lanes to get out of the way of an erratic driver, when they lost control of the vehicle and began to slide, crashing through a barrier along the interstate. The hearse came to a stop with its front tires hanging over a ledge that dropped down into a canyon — like we’ve seen in so many cartoons.
The driver told the outlet that the weight of the body in the back likely kept the hearse from falling off the cliff.
In locally shot video, a responding police officer expresses their astonishment at the situation with some choice language.
“That’s a lucky mother—–r right there,” he says while walking toward the precariously balanced hearse.
Summit Fire & EMS, one of the responding rescue departments that night, posted about the accident on Facebook in a now-deleted post.
“Okay, file this one under: ‘You’ll never believe it,'” the fire and rescue agency wrote, according to the news outlet, adding that the hearse “came to rest teetering over a 100-foot-high embankment.”
In the video, the young funeral home worker can be heard speaking on a cellphone from the back of a police cruiser, recounting his experience to an unknown party on the other end of the call.
“They literally bounced me all the way over to the cliff,” the young man can be heard saying. “I was like teetering, and then when I, like, opened my … eyes, I was like ‘Holy f–k’ and I was coughing like crazy ’cause there was smoke everywhere.”
According to ABC News, the deceased person’s organ donation saved not only the driver of the hearse, but also went on to help an additional eight others.