A miraculous rescue was captured on video after a dad was crushed under a truck. As it looked “like his soul was leaving his body,” the man’s teenage son flew into action, and it was only when the dad later watched the footage that he realized how he was still alive.
When Matthew Wilkinson of Oakdale, California, about 90 miles east of Oakland, came home late from work on a Monday evening, he knew he still had to do some repairs on the brakes of his work truck so that he could continue to do his job. So, he headed to the garage to get started, eventually taking his teen son with him like so many times before. This time, however, it would prove to be a life-saving decision.
When the repair wasn’t going as fast or as easily as the dad had hoped, he sought help. His teen son, Dalin, who had assisted him with repairs in the past, came out to check on him. The dad quickly enlisted his help, he said, adding that working on the vehicle was something they had done many times before.
So, Dalin joined his dad in the garage, and soon, the 15-year-old boy’s presence soon proved invaluable. Although Dalin didn’t fix the truck, he did manage to rescue his dad when things took an absolutely terrifying turn, according to The Blaze.
Matthew Wilkinson had just crawled underneath the truck in an attempt to remove a rotor when the truck came crashing down on top of him while he was still underneath the heavy vehicle.
“I couldn’t get a good angle [on the rotor], so I slid my body underneath the truck and was hitting it,” Wilkinson later recounted. “The second it popped off, the truck fell,” he continued. “I know it rolled forward because I saw it roll forward, and it fell right on top of me.”
As the dad lay crushed under the truck, he struggled to breathe and was unable to call for help, Matthew Wilkinson would later tell KCRA, recalling the harrowing ordeal.
“All I could think about was the breath coming out of me,” he said. “I was just squished. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t yell.”
Luckily, help was already there in the form of his 15-year-old son Dalin, who didn’t hesitate to save his dad. But, Matthew Wilkinson would only realize how he lived to tell his story after he saw the surveillance footage captured by his garage camera. While he was in the hospital, he said he couldn’t figure out how he had managed to free himself. That’s when the surveillance footage came into play.
“All this time in the hospital, I’m trying to figure out how did I get out from under the truck,” Wilkinson said. “I called my kid and had him look at them, look at the surveillance camera, and they realized that [Dalin] had lifted the truck enough for me to roll out.”
While Matthew Wilkinson may have needed the surveillance footage to understand exactly what had happened, Dalin had no problems remembering how he felt or what he did when he saw his dad in distress.
“I just ran over and tried as hard as I could to get [the truck] up enough to get him out,” Dalin explained. “I was scared,” the high school freshman admitted. “I heard him make a noise like his soul was leaving his body. It was crazy,” he continued. “I just ran over and tried as hard as I could to get it up enough to get him out.”
Despite his fears, Dalin lifted the rear corner of the truck just enough so that his dad could escape as seen in the footage captured on a nearby security camera, proving the boy was a hero and had saved his father’s life. Although Matthew Wilkinson suffered a punctured lung, multiple broken ribs, and a separated shoulder in the incident, he was alive and making a strong recovery, thanks to his boy.
“My son is my hero,” Wilkinson stated with affection. “He saved my life.”
With his Oakdale family singing his praises, Dalin was, of course, just glad that his dad is alive after seeing the truck fall on top of him and nearly crush him to death.
“I’m just glad he’s OK,” Dalin said with a slight smile. “That’s all that’s really going through my mind right now.”
There are a ton of good reasons that parents should get their children involved in helping with household tasks and responsibilities. For starters, it’s a good learning experience. And, as Dalin showed, sometimes the child’s help can prove invaluable in other ways. This story deserves a “job well done” for both the son, who saved his dad, and for the father, who took the time to teach his boy how to do repairs. It literally ended up saving his life.
