A California father is especially grateful for his son, his teenager, this holiday season. A truck landed on top of his father and almost crushed him to death.
Matthew Wilkinson, a resident of Oakdale, California (about 90 miles east of Oakland), returned home late last Monday night. He knew that he needed to make some repairs to his truck’s brakes so he could keep doing his job. He went out and started.
Wilkinson, 15 years old, sought the assistance of Dalin, his teenage son who had helped him with other repairs in the past.
Wilkinson was very lucky Dalin was with him. Wilkinson tried to remove a rotor by crawling underneath the truck, but the truck threw him off the roof.
Wilkinson later recalled that “I couldn’t get a good angle on the rotor so I slid under the truck and was hitting it.” The truck fell the second it came off.
Wilkinson still remembers the moment that the truck rolled over him.
He said, “All I could remember was my breath leaving me.” “I was just squished and couldn’t even speak.”
Although Wilkinson needed surveillance footage later to understand what happened next, Dalin (a freshman in high school) still remembers how he felt when he saw his father in distress.
Dalin said, “I just ran over and tried to get [the truck] up enough so that he could get out,”
Dalin said, “I was afraid.” Dalin said, “I heard him making a noise as if his soul was leaving his body.” “It was insane.”
Despite Dalin’s fears footage from a nearby security camera showed that he lifted Wilkinson’s truck enough to allow him to escape.
Wilkinson sustained a punctured lung and multiple broken ribs in the incident. However, he seems to be making a strong recovery.
Wilkinson declared, “My son’s my hero,” with great affection. “He saved my life.”
“I’m just glad he’s OK,” Dalin stated with a slight smile. “That’s all that’s really going through my mind right now.”
