SALT LAKE CITY — Family members are calling it the work of angels and heroes when two young friends rolled their side-by-side UTV in a crash, only to have both survive after one pulled the other from the wreckage.
Saydee Bowen says that she felt someone laying her hands on her after the crash, from which she emerged unscathed. But no one was there.
As she got her bearings, she saw that her friend Avery was very badly hurt, suffering a seizure and bleeding from her mouth and nose.
Saydee was able to talk to first responders on Avery's phone, but she needed to free her friend from the vehicle.
She realized she needed something sharp to cut her loose. Using all her strength, she tore apart a mirror from the UTV, breaking it so that so she could cut Avery out of her seat belt.
In a turn of events that was incredible, another group in a side-by-side rode down the remote, dead-end street, and used their GPS to guide the first responders to the crash site.
Saydee was also able to find the cabin where Avery's grandmother Susan Hoyt and her uncle were staying, yet another development that astounded Hoyt about Saydee, who she considers a hero.
As they all rushed back to the scene, paramedics were life flighting Avery to safety.
Although Avery suffered a concussion, punctured, lung, aorta, spleen, and liver along with five broken ribs and other broken bones, she is recovering.
And she is alive because of the heroism of her friend Saydee, as doctors say Avery would've suffocated if she had not been freed in time.
But Saydee doesn't herself as a hero. It was just something she did in the name of friendship.
