When SUV Crashes into Tree, Strangers Risk Lives To Help Passenger and Keep Car from Overturning
It’s amazing what people can do when they pool their resources to tackle a specific problem. From volunteers handing out care packages to a GoFundMe for a particular cause meeting its goal in under 24 hours, teamwork can accomplish amazing things.
On July 31, a little before 8:30 a.m. in Corona del Mar, California, it was a group of over a dozen people who banded together to keep a car from tipping onto its side.
An SUV had gotten into a collision and ended up on the center divider of a road, the front crunched in and the car itself smoking and leaning precariously to one side as it balanced on the trunk of a tree it had knocked over.
Bystanders of all ages and ethnicities streamed to the damaged vehicle, eager to help. Some were wearing gym clothes, some were wearing work clothes, but all of them were concerned for the people being put at risk.
Over a dozen people helped prop the car up so it wouldn’t roll on its side. One of those people was Mike Ramirez, who’d been working out in a nearby gym.
“It sounded bad,” he said, according to KMOV. “My friend Jen actually told me ‘Mike you gotta go outside. They need your muscles.'”
According to the video from Inside Edition, it was one of the women screaming that really drew him out. “But then I heard the lady screaming for help and I just knew I had to be there,” Ramirez said.
“The first thing that came to my mind and everybody too was just you wanna help,” he said. “If someone is in need of help and you just run.”
The woman who recorded the video recalled how people seemed to come out of nowhere to help.
“All these people just started coming from everywhere,” she said, according to Inside Edition. “Had a couple people here, a couple people from there, somebody from the gym over here, bunch of people from here… people were stopping their cars. Everybody just wanted to help.”
“This whole bunch of people just came and started helping,” said yet another bystander, Patricia Euzarraga. “That really got me because we didn’t know if they were alive or not, you know.
“And they were all helping to lift this really heavy car. And everybody was trying for five minutes to get the door open. It was unbelievable.”
Based on the video, it seems the driver managed to get out of the car eventually, along with one of the two passengers, to help right his own vehicle.
KMOV reported that the remaining passenger was injured, but that all three are expected to recover.
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