DENHAM SPRINGS — Sadie, an 85-year-old Denham Springs woman, thought she wasn’t going to make it when she accidentally crashed her vehicle into a pond near Bass Pro earlier this month. She and her daughter, Shannon Haney, are grateful for helpful bystanders who immediately jumped into action after witnessing the crash.
On Aug. 1, Sadie lost control of her vehicle after turning out of the Sam’s Club in Denham Springs, accidentally pressing the gas instead of the brakes. She ended up driving over the curb and hitting a tree before going through a chain-link fence, knocking one of the tires off the car.
The vehicle possibly rolled or flipped, and landed in the water of the pond area. Once in the water, Sadie’s car began sinking.
While most people generally turn right out of Sam’s Club onto the road running between the big box store and Bass Pro Shops, Sadie had turned left.
Haney believes it was a blessing that someone happened to see her mom crash and rushed over to help.
“Unless somebody noticed the fence down and her car there, nobody would have went down far enough to even see that. So she could have just been in there with nothing. Thank God they saw what happened, and they ran right towards her,” Haney said.
Haney was at work just a few minutes down the road and said she’d spoken to her mom on the phone only minutes before the accident happened. One of the men at the scene called Haney from her mother’s phone to tell her about the situation, and she rushed to the area.
“My mom said that it was the scariest thing she’s ever been through, and that she thought she was dead. She was asking herself, ‘Am I dead? Am I dead?’ And then when she saw the fish swimming by, she was like, ‘I’m alive,'” Haney said.
Once she knew she was alive, Sadie started screaming for help, however, her rescuers were already on their way.
Sadie broke her sternum in the crash and was hospitalized for five days. She has been recovering well from her injury, but still has some soreness, Haney said.
“I’ve always said she’s a rock star. She’s a tough old bird because, man, she’s been through a lot in her life, but this one really took a toll,” Haney told UWK.
Just a couple of days after being discharged, Sadie went back to the hospital with a severe kidney infection, which Haney said may have been caused by the pond’s water. She spent more time in the hospital and then, only three days after getting home, Sadie had a gall bladder attack that sent her back to the hospital.
She recently underwent gall bladder surgery and is now recovering back at home, her daughter said.
After the accident, Haney made a Facebook post telling her mom’s story and thanking the men who came to her rescue before first responders even arrived. Both women are still hoping to meet these rescuer angels to thank them again for being there for her that day: “It was really super important to her to make sure that they knew how grateful she was, because she said those were her angels.”
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