A father who was involved in a violent car accident last weekend is trying to find the good Samaritan who stopped to help him, his daughter and their dog, in order to thank him.
“He’s a guardian angel. He came and he went,” says Dave Ferrara, 48, his throat tight, still shaken by his mishap last Sunday.
That evening, around 11:30 p.m., the Terrebonne resident was returning home with his 16-year-old daughter, after picking her up from her workplace, and their 1-year-old labrador, Samy.
He was calmly driving on Highway 640 when, in a split second, the car in front of him tried to avoid a deer that came out of nowhere.
It then spun on the slippery road due to the rain, making the collision inevitable.
“I got into it. We went head-to-head at 100 km/h. I didn’t have time to do anything,” Mr. Ferrara recalls with difficulty, his voice trembling.
Photo courtesy, DAVE FERRARA
Stuck
By his estimate, as many as six airbags deployed in his wrecked black Buick Envista SUV as it struck the left shoulder guardrail.
“There was a smoke because of the cushions. My daughter Olivia thought the car was on fire. She was screaming: ‘Daddy, I don’t want to die’,” says the man who tried as best he could to reassure his daughter, while realizing that they were stuck in the passenger compartment because of the guardrail and the cushions.
When he finally managed to open a window, Mr. Ferrara also noticed that the vehicles on the highway were not slowing down at all alongside them, and that the danger was still real.
“That’s when I started to panic. I saw the worst coming,” he said, because he was afraid of being hit a second time.
Disappeared
Then, the former restaurateur and tour manager heard a voice asking him if everything was okay.
“I said, ‘Yes, help us get out,’” Mr. Ferrara recalled. He went to get a knife to pierce one of the cushions, and he pulled us all out the driver’s window.
In the seconds that followed, the first responders arrived on site, and the forty-year-old and his daughter did not have the chance to greet this good Samaritan.
The only
“I can’t even put a face to him. We were too on edge,” he admits. “What makes me even more emotional is that he withdrew. He didn’t seek recognition.”
“He did everything. He was the only one who stopped,” Mr. Ferrara continued. “He put himself at risk. The way my vehicle was immobilized, it was extremely dangerous.”
“We would like to at least find him to thank him and shake his hand,” he concludes.
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