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Neighbors save woman after 80-foot fallen tree traps her in car

Neighbors save woman trapped in car by fallen tree

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A woman was trapped in her car when an 80-foot oak tree fell on her while at a stop sign on the north side of Indianapolis. Neighbors stepped in to save her life.

Around 6 p.m. Friday at the intersection of Hoover Road and Spring Mill Lane, the 200-year-old tree came crashing down as storms from Hurricane Helene raged.

At the intersection’s stop sign, a gray SUV rolled up and landed directly under the tree’s limbs. The branches immediately shattered her windshield and missed her by inches.

Trapped inside her car, she managed to move closer to the back.

That’s when neighbors began to arrive and noticed the trapped car with a woman inside.

“Terry said, ‘There’s somebody in that car.’ And I said, ‘What car?’” Spring Mill Lane resident Todd Tetrault said.

Tetrault and fellow neighbor Terry Keuhl jumped into action and moved branches away from the car’s hatchback.

“Todd and I did our best to heave a giant branch out of the way,” Keuhl said.

“It was just enough to get the hatchback open, because she was already kind of trying to crawl towards the back to get out,” Tetrault said.

The woman crawled out of the back of the car and almost immediately got treatment from paramedics.

Miraculously, she was left nearly uninjured.

“She didn’t even look like she had a scratch on her except her pants were torn a little bit, but it was unbelievable, like unreal,” Tetrault said. “You see what all that damage looks like, that she didn’t get hurt at all. Actually, when she got out, she didn’t have her glasses, so she was trying to communicate that she couldn’t see very well.”

Keuhl said the branches crushed the entire roof of her car.

“From the moonlight, they could see the taillight of the car underneath the tree, so they knew someone was there,” Gary Lemmon, who owns the home near the tree, said.

Lemmon was not at home when the tree fell, but he received several messages from neighbors.

He said the car is totaled and “flattened like a pancake.”

The tree downed a power line and light and neighbors took another step to help people in the area.