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LEBANON, Ore. — A man who found himself pinned by his 3,000-pound tractor has his teenage daughters to thank for a quick rescue.
Jeff Smith said he was trying to pull a stump out of his garden last week when his boot slipped off the clutch due to the mud. The tractor flipped, pinning him to the ground under the steering wheel.
The 36-year-old said he immediately called to his daughters, 14-year-old Haylee and 16-year-old Hannah, who were outside walking the neighbor's dogs.
"I was yelling, ‘Oh God, save me.' There was enough pressure on me, I didn't know if anyone could hear me. I had just told them to walk the dogs, then I got on the tractor," Smith told ABCNews.com.
Thirty seconds later, the girls were at their father's side, trying to dig underneath the tractor to free the man. They soon realized there was nothing to do but lift the tractor off him.
"I told them they need to try to lift on the front," Smith said. "The first time they lifted it, it gave me a brief moment to get a breath in. I couldn't move yet. They let it down, and it expelled that breath I got. Then they lifted it again and I was able to wiggle."
Smith told the Democrat Herald it was almost instantaneous relief.
"If these two hadn't have been here to hear me," he said. "They saved my life."
Smith was treated at a local hospital for a broken left wrist and other injuries. Haylee pulled a muscle in her leg, and Hannah "felt like an 80-year-old getting out of bed" the next day, she said.
Smith said he wouldn't be alive if not for his daughters.
"It's amazing. You hear about this kind of stuff… this adrenaline rush, being able to pick cars up and slide people out. You never realize it's really there until you actually witness it," he told KGW. "I was very amazed and very grateful they were able to do that."
