Man Saves Baby Niece in Car That Fell 100 Feet Off Mountainside Road in Alabama
When he first saw his 11-month-old niece, he thought she was "lifeless."
— -- A 24-year-old man rescued his baby niece from a car that had fallen 100 feet from a mountainside road in Alabama, a dramatic encounter captured on his cellphone.
Tyler Blake Kimbrall was following his sister Destiny Kay Hollis, who was driving a Mitsubishi coupe with her 11-month-old daughter Breleigh at night on Aug. 4, when she suddenly made a wrong turn on Blue Road in Colbert Heights, he told ABC News.
Kimbrall tried flashing his lights and honking his horn, but Hollis didn't notice, he said. She continued down the "snake-like road" and disappeared after taking a sharp curve, he said.
When he came around a few seconds later, he said he saw the car "upside down in an embankment" about 100 feet down from the mountainside road.
"At first, I didn't see [Hollis], I didn't hear anything," Kimbrall told ABC News. But then "I heard her get out of the car, frantically screaming for Breleigh," who was still in the car, he said.
He added that Hollis was screaming, "I don't think she's alive, I don't think she's alive," but he told her to go with his grandmother, who was in his car and asked her to call 911.
When Kimbrall got down to the car, he said he saw the passenger side was crushed. He added he had a hard time seeing baby Breleigh, so he used the light from his cellphone and took video, using the screen to see her by angling the phone a certain way.
"When I did first see her in the video, she appeared to be lifeless," he said. "She just laid there, passed out, unconscious, and that scared me."
Kimbrall said he then checked for her pulse, which was still going, so he began to carefully remove her from the vehicle.
Minutes into the seven-minute video of the rescue, baby Breleigh can finally be heard crying -- a cry that Kimbrall said "was the most precious cry he could ever hear."
As ambulances and emergency personnel arrived, evidenced by the flashing blue and red lights in the video, Kimbrall said an EMT allowed him to continue rescuing his niece.
"I finally got her out and handed her right over to [an EMT]," he said.
Emergency personnel checked his sister's and Breleigh's vital signs and determined that they were OK, he added, saying they were not transported to the hospital.
A helicopter was even launched to the scene but was cleared because it was determined "there was not a need for the trauma system to be activated," Colbert County Emergency Management Authority (EMA) director Mike Malton told ABC News. "There was a patient-refusal-for-treatment form filled out, so it doesn’t look like the victims were taken to a hospital."
Kimbrall said everyone involved was physically fine except the car, "which was a complete loss."
"This has definitely changed my life and made me much closer to my niece," he said. "I love her as if she was my own."
Related Stories
ABC News Live