High school students lift car to rescue woman, 2-year-old child in Utah: Watch video
A mother and her son, a 2-year-old child, were trapped underneath a vehicle before being rescued by a group of high school students in Utah. The students lifted up the car in a dramatic scene that was caught on camera.
Video footage from Tuesday's incident shows students of Layton Christian Academy rush to the school's parking after a mother and her two children were struck and pinned underneath a vehicle. While one of the children, a 3-year-old girl, was able to free herself, the 2-year-old and their mother remained trapped underneath, reported KSLTV.
About 20 students surrounded the vehicle and lifted it an inch or two above the ground to allow the trapped individuals to be retrieved safely, according to a GoFundMe account set up to help with the family's medical expenses.
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Mother and son trapped, teens perform dramatic rescue
“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. It was split second,” the school’s associate pastor and CEO, Chris Crowder, told KSLTV. “I immediately just ran into the building because I knew I had to get a lot of people to lift this car.”
Crowder said that students rushed to help when they heard him yell for help.
As the students lifted the car, a senior military person present on scene Dominique Childress pulled the woman and child to safety.
Childress told KSLTV that the incident unfolded as he was picking up his kids from school. He said that he was alerted to the woman and children in distress by his son’s kindergarten teacher.
Praising the teenagers for their bravery, Childress said that "they are 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,” Childress told KSL.
How did the woman and child get trapped under the car?
The accident occurred when the vehicle's driver was temporarily blinded by sunlight at approximately 3:45 p.m., authorities told KSL.
The mother, identified as Bridgette Ponson, works in the school’s admissions office. She and her daughter were rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, while the 2-year-old was taken to a local children's hospital via an air ambulance, as per the GoFundMe page.
The 2-year-old boy’s face was “purple,” when he was rescued, Childress told KSLTV. However, he was still breathing.
School officials told KSLTV that the children did not suffer any serious injuries and are now out of the hospital, while Ponson has been in and out of surgery.
Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @saman_shafiq7.