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PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) — Two young men brought together by a serious crash are now good friends.
On the night of Nov. 14, Miguel Vasquez’ Jeep stalled in the center lane of I-405 Southbound. Traffic slowed to weave around him. That’s when 20-year-old Jalen Williams, noticed the problem, pulled over, and offered to help.
“He was like alright man I got you,” Vasquez told FOX 12.
Williams offered to push his car to the shoulder, both pressed on with a sense of urgency worried about the traffic surrounding them. Suddenly, another driver impacts from behind, pinning Williams’s leg against the two vehicles.
“I blacked out, I honestly thought I died those two seconds I wasn’t there I was just … I didn’t feel there,” Williams said.
Williams was left lying on the pavement of I-405, suffering multiple broken bones and a large gash that cut his Femoral Artery.
“I could have bled out on the pavement in the middle of that interstate you know I’m so thankful that god, he spared my life that day,” Williams said.
Incredibly, the man he had just stopped to help, Vasquez, is studying to become a paramedic.
“I just knew. I just knew right there and then what I have to do,” Vasquez said.
With Williams losing blood fast, Vaquezl pulled off his own belt and applied a tourniquet to help slow the bleeding.
“Jalen’s best of intentions ended up being a blessing to him, that the person he was helping was studying to be an EMT. How amazing is that and knew what to do at the scene of the accident to save his life. That’s just phenomenal,” Jalen’s mother, Pamela Wall-Dover said.
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“It’s just crazy to me like how fast it all happened and how fast he reacted to the situation,” Williams said. “Had the roles been switched, had I let him push his own car and he had been hit, I would not have known what to do. I can tell you that for sure.”
A GoFundMe account has been created to help offset some of Williams’s medical expenses.
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