Not all heroes wear capes.
Some heroes are just everyday people, or in this case in Utah, a large gathering of 20 or so high school students. Those attending Layton Christian Academy in Layton, Utah sprung into action when a staff member from the school found herself in a life-threatening situation.
Bridgette Ponson was leaving the school with her two kids (2-year-old and 3-year-old) when every parent’s worst nightmare played out in real life. No parent wants to put their children’s in harm’s way, and Ponson unintentionally put her and her kids’ lives in danger when a car in the parking lot backed into the three of them.
Officials say that the driver was temporarily blinded by bright sunlight rushing into their car, and failed to see the woman and her two kids behind them. Once they backed up, the mother and her two children were pinned underneath the vehicle.
The mother began screaming for help, and high schoolers from all over the campus came rushing to the car. Others ran off to other buildings to ask for assistance with saving the woman and her two kids, and once they got enough people around the car, they started to lift it up.
Surveillance footage shows the 20 plus teenagers surrounding the car and lifting it up off the ground, allowing for Ponson and her two young children to crawl to safety. One of the two children was relatively unharmed in the incident, while the other had to receive treatment for injuries sustained in the accident.
Ponson herself was forced to go through multiple surgeries, but is now expected to make a full recovery. If it wasn’t for the high schoolers that rushed to aid her, who knows how things would have ended up.
Sophomore student Theo Roach, who helped lift the car and save the lives of the woman and her two children, talked to KSL 5 about how natural it felt for all the students (with different backgrounds) to come together and help someone else:
“I think that just shows our togetherness as a school and just how we’re all from different areas. We could just know what to do. I think that’s part of God.”
You can view the surveillance video of the scary incident and harrowing rescue below:
What an incredible story.
Dominique Childress, an Air Force Base senior airman that happened to be at the school picking up his children when the accident occurred, and had this to say when asked by KSL 5 about the heroics of the high school students:
“They are the purest form of the word hero and 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.”
You can hear more from Childress about the incident in the news interview clip linked below:
