A Medora woman and her nephew and great-nephew were in a truck traveling home to Medora after a family reunion in Deputy.
The ride Saturday afternoon was normal until Suz Thompson’s nephew, Anthony Goodman, noticed a tree flying through the air as they approached the 2400 block of East State Road 250 near Brownstown.
“It was coming over the treeline. It didn’t fall out of the tree,” he said. “I just saw a tree flying through the air. I was like, ‘What is going on?’”
After briefly looking down at the road, he looked back up to see if he could see the tree. That’s when the tree came through the windshield of their 2018 Toyota Tundra.
“I just stopped the truck and then figured out if everybody was OK, and I was like, ‘I’m hurt. You’ve got to call somebody,’” Goodman said, as his aunt was in the passenger seat and his son, Max Goodman, 5, was in the driver’s-side back seat.
Thompson said her phone was gone, but she was able to get her nephew’s phone and call 911. Meanwhile, passersby approached the vehicle to check on the occupants.
“I tried putting the truck in drive to pull out in between the hills, that way nobody came over the hills and hit us, and they thought I was crazy and the truck was rolling. I was like, ‘No, I’m trying to drive it,’” Goodman said.
He estimated the tree was about 8 feet long and 1 foot round. It hit him in the right arm and shoulder, and he had to be cut out of the truck.
“They had to chainsaw (the tree) off the truck,” Thompson said of first responders. “They left what was in the window and inside the truck, but they chainsawed what was on the truck, so I figured two of them couldn’t lift it or they wouldn’t have been chainsawing it. They just would have moved it.”
Thompson said she had bruises and glass on her.
“I don’t know if it might have bounced off of (Anthony) and hit me, but he got the brunt of it because he has even got a place that goes from the right side of his belly button all the way around to the middle of his back just cracked,” she said.
Max just had a piece of glass in his finger.
“Other than that, he said his belly hurt. Other than that, he was fine,” Anthony said.
“He goes with the rolls and punches usually,” Thompson said of her great-nephew.
The incident was reported to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department at 3:56 p.m. as a personal injury wreck.
Once Jackson County Emergency Medical Services personnel arrived, Anthony said they checked on his son first and then asked if he was OK. He told them he hurt pretty bad. By that time, it started raining.
“When they got to the scene, it wasn’t long (before he was taken to the hospital), and it didn’t take them long to get there, either,” he said. “I’d say all of it within 5 or 10 minutes, I was in the ambulance leaving.”
He was transported to Schneck Medical Center in Seymour for treatment of bruising around his hip, cuts up his right arm and a separated right shoulder, and he had stitches put in his right hand. He said he was there for about five hours before going home.
On Monday, he returned to the hospital to have his shoulder examined.
A couple of days after the incident, the family still couldn’t believe what happened.
“Like a ‘Twister’ movie, just weird,” Anthony said.
Thompson said the only thing she remembers is seeing the tree between them and blood everywhere.
“Other than that, I have no recollection of any of it,” she said. “We’re still in shock, really. It’s just not something you ever even hear about. You see stuff like that in movies and when it’s storming, and there was no rain or wind at that time.”
At this point, she doesn’t know if the truck can be fixed. The Tundra was her father’s until he died in March.
So what does she credit to the three of them still being alive?
“The good Lord and my dad,” she said. “My dad passed in March. That was his truck, and I just think it was higher powers. Everybody has told us they didn’t know how we were alive.”
A passerby posted a picture of their truck on Facebook shortly after the incident. It immediately received reactions and comments.
“By the time they were putting me and Max in the ambulance, they were already telling us it was on Facebook,” Thompson said. “Then we got to the hospital and they are telling us they already saw the tree that went through the truck. I was like, ‘Wow!’”