Hero Weightlifter Moves SUV to Save Crash Victim

Jane Werrell
By Jane Werrell
February 16, 2019UK
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Hero Weightlifter Moves SUV to Save Crash Victim
(Victor Freitas/Unsplash)

A weightlifter used his muscles to help paramedics rescue a driver involved in a car crash.

Ryan Belcher, 29, heard a “big smash” and rushed outside from his job about 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 14, to discover a Jeep Cherokee on its roof in melting snow.

Not far away was a sedan, crushed at the front, and car debris scattered across the Michigan road.

There was a man inside the Jeep, saying he couldn’t feel his legs, Belcher told the local Michigan news website MLive.

“From there, I just kind of got tunnel vision,” he told the website. “I grabbed the back, where the window was smashed out and lifted up and started pushing.”

Belcher has previously squatted 950 pounds, bench-pressed 530 pounds and dead-lifted 800 pounds. He works out at the gym 5 days a week, and on Thursday he was in the right place at the right time.

“If I could describe it in one word, It would be humbled,” Belcher said after the rescue to MLive.

“This could have been anybody, it could have been me. And just getting home to my children after that is all I thought about.”

He added, “I’d hope if it was me in there, somebody would help me the way I did them.”

‘I Was Put There for a Reason’

Belcher said his son calls him the Hulk but wasn’t sure about being called a hero.

“I like being called the Hulk, my son’s favorite is the Hulk and he always says my daddy is the Hulk. To say I’m a hero, I don’t know. I’m glad to have been there and I was put there for a reason,” he told WXYZ.

“I just hear a big smash and, as I look out, a crowd of people are coming and this vehicle is flipped upside down and my first instinct was to just take off out there,” he told the news station.

He saw a bloodied woman in the car in the middle of the road, and made sure she was ok.

Belcher then spotted the man pinned under the Jeep.

He faced a dilemma: to save the man or not believe in himself, WXYZ reported.

“Half of his torso was outside of the vehicle and the other half was still underneath in the vehicle. I had no other choice. It was either save a man or not believe in myself. So I just reached in did what I had to do,” he said.

He thought the power training he’d been through was “really going to pay off in a good way to help somebody.”

No Fatalities

There were no fatalities reported from the crash, which involved two drivers.

According to the Daily Mail, Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Derrick Jackson said, “Both drivers suffered significant injuries, but were alert on the scene.”

A section of Michigan Avenue was closed for nearly four hours to investigate the scene, MLive reported. The Jeep was stopped for an unknown reason and struck from behind. According to the website, the cause of the crash is still being investigated.

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