LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Strangers jumped into harm’s way to help a teenager after she was hit by a truck near Sahara Avenue and Rainbow Boulevard on Thursday afternoon.
Dash camera video captures people running to 14-year-old Chelsea Madrigal’s aid from all different directions, after a black pickup truck hits her while she was in the crosswalk.
Her mother, Elizabeth Mireles, says Madrigal sustained injuries to her spinal cord, jaw and arm. She is recovering at UMC.
“Seeing a child being ran over in front of you. My soul left my body,” April Sago says, who jumped in to help Madrigal. “She was rolled over on her tummy, and that poor baby looked at me like, ‘Help me,’ and I just ran to her.”
Sago says she applied pressure to Madrigal’s wounds and comforted her.
“I grabbed a hold of her hand and told her to squeeze my hand. She said, ‘Am I going to die?’ And I said, ‘Not today, not if I can help it, help is coming, just stay with me,’” Sago says.
Help did come, Madrigal was taken to UMC where she is recovering as of Tuesday afternoon.
Mireles says while this was all unfolding Thursday, she was waiting for Madrigal to return home from school, wondering what was taking so long.
She eventually got her answer when her daughter’s location on her phone updated to the hospital.
“It destroyed me, it destroyed me because I never knew what was happening until the hospital told me that she was ran over,” Mireles says in Spanish.
Mireles says her daughter is in pain, but trying to stay positive.
“She tells me, ‘mom, everything is going to be okay, don’t worry, I didn’t die,’ but I know that it hurts her,” she says.
It is not clear when Madrigal will leave UMC yet, but while she recovers she’s had plenty of visitors, including Sago.
According to Metro’s crash report, the driver of the truck said when he believed it was safe, he made the right turn. When he realized he hit someone, he pulled over and stayed on scene.
The report states the driver was given a citation for failing to yield the right of way to a pedestrian, and that no drug or alcohol impairment was suspected.
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