A group of good Samaritans saved an infant and a 2-year-old from drowning inside an upside down pickup that was filling with rushing water during severe storms in North Texas Saturday.
The rescue was caught on video. Emily Ocheltree, 21, told Telemundo 39’s Carlos Zapata she and her family were on their way to a storm shelter when powerful winds and heavy rain caught up with their vehicle, causing her husband, Phillip, 25, to lose control.
The heart-wrenching video shows a group of people who stopped to rescue the family outside Myrtle Springs.
The rushing water made it difficult to open the vehicle’s doors.
Thomas Mitchell, the man who shot the video, said the baby was limp and appeared to be turning bluish-gray when pulled from the vehicle.
At one point, Mitchell put the phone in his pocket to help give the baby CPR, but he kept the recording going and we can hear what happened.
“It was something that I can’t believe happened,” Enrique Martinez, overcome with emotion, told NBC News on Monday. “People were crying, there was a lot of confusion. The parents were still in the car at the time. Everyone was trying to do as much as they could do.”
The good Samaritans performed CPR as a woman nearby prayed for
Jesus to let the baby breathe.
“When they said they are breathing, I said, ‘Please, let me have my babies, let them be in my arms,” Emily Ocheltree said. “I see my daughter’s lifeless body just sitting on the back of the truck, and you just don’t know what to do. I can’t go over there. It’s a miracle what they did.”
“There’s no debt in the world that I could repay them,” she said. Good Samaritans Save Babies From Car Trapped in Texas FloodAt last check, both children were recovering in the hospital.
The storms the Ocheltree’s were caught in is the same one that spawned seven tornadoes Saturday night in North Texas that killed four people and injured dozens of others.