Police Officers Use Superhuman Strength To Lift 3,000 Lb Car off Man Trapped Underneath
People who are handy with fixing things are great to have around — but those skills don’t just appear. They are won through years of blood, sweat, tears and more than a few dangerous mistakes.
Devon Haycock of Mesa, Arizona, was out on Tuesday morning working on his wife’s Honda Civic, which needed some suspension work done.
He put it up on jacks, slid under the car, asked for a screwdriver and then started screaming.
One of the jacks had failed, and the car was resting on him. Devon was trapped.
“And he just barely shifted just to get his arm in a certain position and the whole car came off the jacks and it bounced down on him,” his wife, Kaylin, told KTUU-TV. “Obviously, we both screamed.”
As the car weighed on him, Devon said he could only take a “bunch of little breaths,” and it wouldn’t be long before he lost consciousness.
“The whole time my face was pinned right behind the wheel well so I could see my wife the whole time panicking,” he told KPNX-TV.
“And it was awful, the whole time just saying ‘I love you. It’s OK. I love you. I’m fine.’ Just trying to keep her calm. It was the worst time ever.”
The couple is expecting a baby girl around Christmas, so no doubt that thought flashed through their minds as he struggled to breathe.
Thankfully, police responded within minutes, and Officers Nolan Martineau and Josh Gardner with the Mesa Police Department were soon in his driveway, assessing the situation.
“His whole upper body was under the car,” Martineau said. “His legs were sticking out. I could see the jack that he had was kind of tilted over, it failed.”
“When I heard, ‘OK, we’re going to lift it up,’ that’s when my vision started to go blurry,” Devon explained. “I was starting to pass out.”
A neighbor also helped the two cops, and they lifted the 3,000-pound car.
Though Devon was starting to lose consciousness, he was freed.
“I was just really happy that he was OK,” Martineau said. “That he was able to get out on his own, so that was a really good sign; that he was still breathing and talking.”
Devon said he was “extremely thankful” for his rescuers’ intervention and that he’d be taking the car into the mechanic.
“Great job by Officers Martineau and Gardner!” the City of Mesa Police Department posted on Thursday. “This is just another example of the countless ways we make a difference to the people we encounter every day.
“Keep up the good work! You are appreciated by many!”
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