‘Lucky to be alive’: Man’s ‘fatherly instincts’ kick in after teens hurt in late-night crash
By Alyse Jones
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HARRAH, Oklahoma (KOCO) — A man says “fatherly instincts” kicked in when he sprang into action to help save three teenagers after their car ran off the road in Harrah.
On Friday, three teenagers ran off the road and hit a tree near Wilshire Boulevard and North Harrah Road. One of those teens was taken to a hospital.
A neighbor told KOCO 5 that he heard tires screeching and a loud boom just as he and his wife were falling asleep. When he ran outside, he saw a car slammed into the tree.
“Those kids are just lucky to be alive,” Steve Hopkins, who ran in to help, said. “There was a little girl in the back seat, probably 15 or 16 years old, had a laceration on her forehead, bleeding pretty good. She was knocked out.”
A teenage boy was crying for help in the passenger seat.
“The tree they hit was almost up into the floorboard of the car in the passenger seat. The dash was right up against his chest and the seat had him pinned in,” Hopkins said.
As first responders came in to save them, Hopkins said he did all he could to remind the teenagers that they were going to be okay.
“My fatherly instincts kicked in,” he said. “Just trying to keep them calm and trying to comfort them.”
He said the boy who was trapped in the front seat has two broken legs, but all three teens are going to be okay. Now, Hopkins wants to remind drivers to be aware on rural roads like where the crash occurred.
“That’s a parent’s worst nightmare, is your kids out late at night. Especially out where we live, it’s so dark out there. And if you come up over the hill and don’t know that curve is there, it’s really hard to correct and stay on the road,” Hopkins said. “I’m just glad we were there and it wasn’t out where there weren’t any houses around, because who knows how long they would’ve been there before someone would’ve saw them?”
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