The latest addition of our Knives Save Lives series reports on how a young girl in New Orleans was nearly strangled by her seatbelt, before a passerby used a $5 pocketknife to set her free.
According to an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Evelyn Saenz was riding in a booster seat in the back seat of her parent’s car, when somehow the seat belt became wrapped around her neck. Evelyn’s mother, Kelly, said that her daughter was being strangled and there was little she or her husband could do.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kelly said. “It was like (the movie) ‘Christine.’ It just locked up and, no matter how hard we pulled, we couldn’t undo it. It was like a noose and it just kept getting tighter and tighter. It was strangling her.”
The couple pulled over into a convenience store, where Evelyn’s father, Joseph, retrieved a box cutter, but it failed to cut through the belt. Meanwhile, little Evelyn was turning blue.
Around that time, resident Bill Turner heard the commotion and approached the scene. Turner went to work with his $5 pocketknife and easily cut through the belt
“I just cut right through it,” Turner said.
Little Evelyn was taken to the hospital, but she suffered no permanent injuries.
Her family later returned to the neighborhood where Evelyn was freed to track down a very modest Bill Turner.
“He said he didn’t do anything,” Kelly said. “I said, ‘No. You just saved my daughter’s life.’ “
August 14, 2011 at 5:39 am
This is why everyone should carry a pocket knife!