Homeless To The Rescue

[Willowdared]

Homeless men rescue girl pinned by car in accident

'Let's go!' witness shouts; Cadillac lifted off 9-year-old

ASSOCIATED PRESS

November 29, 2006

LAS VEGAS – Stan Washburn thought of his daughters Saturday as he looked at the bloodied face of a 9-year-old girl and tried to heave a 5,000-pound car off her contorted body.

“I could see them in her eyes from time to time beneath all the blood,” the 48-year-old homeless man said in a newspaper interview published yesterday.
“I mean, I knew it wasn't one of my little girls but I remember them when they were that little, and I knew it was somebody's little girl. . . . I just couldn't let her die,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

It was 2:30 p.m. Saturday as the one-eyed Washburn sat drinking beer with friends on a concrete wall between a Jack in the Box restaurant and the Silver Nugget Bowling Center in North Las Vegas.

He saw the 9-year-old girl, who had been waiting across the street with an older woman, suddenly run into the street, straight into the path of a late model Cadillac, Washburn said. Brakes screamed. So did the older woman. Washburn was sure he could hear the girl, who was being dragged under the car, yelling, “No!”

By 2:31 p.m., he and a few inebriated, frail friends picked up the massive car that had trapped the girl under its carriage.

Washburn wasn't far from the North Las Vegas field he calls home when he helped the girl, who was in serious condition at University Medical Center yesterday.

He lives across from the Silver Nugget in a vacant field strewn with old clothes, dead rats, plastic bags, cigarette butts, beer cans and wine bottles. To make it easier to sleep at night, Washburn has dug a shallow foxhole to fight off the wind. He covers himself with an old sleeping bag that marks his spot when he isn't there.

“This place has been good to me,” he said, scratching his pockmarked face. But he can't erase the bad memories of the accident.

When the girl was hit, Washburn recalls yelling at the men near him, “Let's go!” After seeing that the girl was alive, he yelled at the men to pick up the rear of the car. Seconds later, the car was off the child.

When police came, most of the rescuers ran.

“What is so incredible is that we have a bunch of transients here, all were probably intoxicated, saving a little girl's life,” said Tim Bedwell, a spokesman for the North Las Vegas Police Department. The driver of the car, a 66-year-old woman, has not been cited in the accident.

Washburn said he hasn't been able to beat the bottle.

On Monday, Washburn borrowed a cell phone to call his daughters, Sonia and Charlene Washburn of Farmington, N.M. He stared up at the sun and wept. “I can't come home because I'm not together yet,” he told them. “You're better off without me.”

[TheOldRhino]

What a sad ending. Did the little girl live?

I think LVMPD needs to buy him a case of:

[Willowdared]

Nine year old at UMC after being hit by car
Nov 27, 2006 10:58 AM
A young girl is in serious but stable condition at UMC after being hit by a car in North Las Vegas. The accident happened Saturday at Las Vegas Boulevard near Lake Mead, right in front of the Silver Nugget Casino.

The nine year old ran into traffic and was hit by an oncoming car. The driver did not have enough time to stop. The girl was trapped under the wheel of the car. Fortunately, a group of homeless men standing nearby came to the rescue.

"I just hated to see the little kid under the car. I hated to see the lady, she didn't mean to do it. We just did what we could do because we were here, ya know?" said William Corbin, one of the men who saved the girl.

"The four men actually lifted the car and moved it to the side in order to get the girl out," said Tim Bedwell, North Las Vegas Police.

The driver of the car will not face any charges because there was no cross-walk where the girl was trying to cross.

[10-42Adam]

Great story. Hopefully the little girl turns out okay...

[Ducky]

I'm just glad it was the rear wheel instead of the front. It would have had a much different ending, and her rescuers might not have been able to cope with not being able to help no matter how hard they tried.