Incredible: Strangers Work Together To Lift Van Off Woman After Crash By Amanda Thomason Published June 6, 2020 at 8:13am
Lifting a car is often limited to the realm of superheroes, though there are known cases where a parent uses their superhuman strength to move vehicles to save their children.
In general, though, it’s not an easy feat. In many cases where moving a car is necessary, time is of the essence because someone’s life is at stake, the car might ignite, or the car is already on fire.
In such cases there’s no time to wait for an emergency crew. Thankfully for one woman in Indianapolis, Indiana, people turned up to help her Thursday when she found herself pinned under her vehicle.
Laurie Collins, a native who lived near the site of the crash and, in a comment on a Facebook post said she was out running errands, responded immediately once she knew something was wrong.
“I heard the impact,” she told WTHR. “I just didn’t see it.”
When she got to the scene, though, it became clear that the situation was urgent.
“You could see the lady was underneath the van,” she said.
“All of a sudden, all these people came out of nowhere, all kinds of different people and they were all trying to help together.”
“You could see them talking to her trying to get her, assess her and they all just kind of said, ‘We’re gonna get this van off her.'”
“I think they said, ‘one, two, three’ and they all pushed up and they almost couldn’t get it, so like, two more guys came over and were trying to help.”
“There was two people kneeling in front of her, like kind of stroking her hair and trying to get her to not move.”
Eventually, the van was lifted and the woman was moved out of its way.
“There was no hesitation,” Collins said. “There was no decisions. It was instant, like everybody automatically worked together.”
The current status of the woman was unknown.
“[L]ast I heard she was hanging in there but in critical condition,” Collins responded in the comments of one of her posts.
It was difficult to see the woman in such a terrifying position, but Collins said witnessing people work together so positively was heartening.
They didn’t know each other or what views the others held, they didn’t care about anything other than working together to save a life.
“If we can have small moments like this and build those small moments into bigger things,” she said, “we’re gonna head in the right direction.”