One California dad is particularly thankful for his teenage son this holiday season. The youngster recently saved his father’s life when a truck fell on top of him and nearly crushed him to death.
On a Monday evening last month, Matthew Wilkinson of Oakdale, California, about 90 miles east of Oakland, came home late from work. However, 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 went out and got started.
When the repair did not proceed as quickly or as easily as he had hoped, Wilkinson solicited the help of his son, Dalin, 15, who had assisted him with many repairs in the past.
Wilkinson is lucky Dalin was there. When Wilkinson crawled underneath the truck in an attempt to remove a rotor, the truck suddenly fell on top of him.
“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.”
Wilkinson can still recall the moment the truck rolled on top of him.
“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.”
Though Wilkinson later needed surveillance footage to understand exactly what happened next, Dalin, a high school freshman, remembers how he felt and 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 stated.
“I was scared,” Dalin added. “I heard him make a noise like his soul was leaving his body. It was crazy.”
Despite Dalin’s fears, footage captured on a nearby security camera confirmed that he lifted the rear corner of the truck enough so that Wilkinson could escape.
Wilkinson suffered a punctured lung, multiple broken ribs, and a separated shoulder in the incident, but he appears to be making a strong recovery.
“My son is my hero,” Wilkinson stated with affection. “He saved my life.”
“I’m just glad he’s OK,” Dalin stated with a slight smile. “That’s all that’s really going through my mind right now.”
H/T: the Daily Caller