Boy, 8, drives truck to rescue trapped dad
Published: July 16, 2005
An eight-year-old boy who watched his father get pinned beneath a piece of heavy farm equipment climbed behind the wheel of the family pickup truck and drove several kilometres for help.
Family and neighbours are hailing James Amell and his little sister, Neely, as heroes for their part in rescuing their dad, Don Amell, a 39-year-old farmer.
Seven-year-old Neely comforted her father while James navigated the hilly rural roads for more than an hour in search of a neighbour.
Mr. Amell had taken the children to a farmyard about 10 kilometres east of Big Beaver, a tiny Saskatchewan village near the U.S. border, to retrieve a combine header, the apparatus at the front of the combine that cuts the crop. He wanted to take the seven-metre-long piece of equipment to their farm southwest of Big Beaver for use at harvest, but the trailer on which it sat had a flat tire, and Mr. Amell set out to fix it.
“I tried pumping [the tire] up first but it wouldn’t hold any air, so then I got a jack and I blocked everything up,” the farmer, now at home after spending six days in a Regina hospital due to the July 6 accident, recalled.
When he removed the tire, the blocks, which were on ground softened by recent rains, gave way under the enormous weight of the header.
“When I looked up, the whole thing was coming down on me, on my left leg, and just pinned me there.”
James and Neely, who had been waiting in the truck, began screaming and ran to their father. “The two little jiggers, they’re trying to lift the weight off me saying, ‘Pull your leg out, Dad, pull your leg out.’ “There’s nobody around for a good four, five miles. I said to my boy, ‘James, you’re just going to have to take the truck and find somebody.’ ” The eight-year-old perched himself on the edge of the seat of the Dodge Ram 2500 in order to reach the pedals. He set out on an eight-kilometre drive to a neighbour’s, only to find nobody home.
James turned the truck around and headed back to Mr. Amell, who, lying in pain in the blistering noon-hour sun, gave him directions to other neighbours, Boyd and Emily Sjogren, about five kilometres away.
The whole experience was “scary,” said James. At one point, the back wheel of the truck went into the ditch. “I had to put it in four-wheel drive. I’d seen my mom and dad use it,” said James, who will enter Grade 4 in the fall. “There was mud flying everywhere.”
James found the Sjogrens at home and calmly asked for help, leading the couple back to his father, where Mr. Sjogren jacked up the header to relieve the pressure on Mr. Amell.
“I had to drive back home to phone 911 and give them directions,” Ms. Sjogren said. “Then I went back and stayed with Don while my husband went up to the highway and waited for the ambulance . . . ”
Mr. Amell, who spent about 1½ hours pinned under the machine, suffered a broken femur, which necessitated the inserting of a rod in his leg from pelvis to knee. Parts on the header also punctured his leg.
He and his wife Shannon marvel at the strength of their children, who have kept fairly quiet about their experience.
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