A California passenger miraculously survived a terrifying incident over the weekend after a metal bar fell off a truck on the highway and came barreling through the car. The woman suffered a horrifying injury as her lower right leg was impaled by the metal bar.
The woman had been traveling northbound on Highway 99 near Fruitridge Road in a Chevrolet Impala in Sacramento on Saturday morning when a metal bar came loose from the big rig driving ahead of her. The metal bar then hit the ground, bounced up, and pierced through the right front-side of the Impala – traveling through the engine compartment and into the footwell before impaling the female passenger’s right leg.
The driver of the Impala was able to pull off the road safely and call 911; however, the driver of the truck failed to stop and continued to travel northbound. First responders freed the woman from the car, and she was transported to a local hospital, where she is in stable condition. Though the encounter resulted in a horrific leg injury, the 49-year-old female passenger immediately received medical attention and hoped to be on her feet in the coming days.
“At approximately 10:05 am, a Chevy Impala was traveling behind an unknown big rig on northbound SR-99 south of Fruitridge Road when a large metal bar fell off of the big rig and landed on the roadway in front of the Chevy,” a California Highway Patrol (CHP) spokesperson said.
The California Highway Patrol shared a graphic image of the bar still in the victim’s leg, as well as a picture of a firefighter holding the large metal bar after its successful extraction. In a horrific photo taken at the scene and posted to CHP’s Facebook, the metal bar can be seen poking through the lower area of the car and into the woman’s leg, which is splattered with blood — though the exact site of the trauma has been covered with a shocked face emoji.