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Miracle Baby Pinned Under SUV Survives Unharmed

by Julia Halewicz (Subscribe to Julia Halewicz's posts)
Jul 24th 2009 9:40AM

3Comments

Filed under: Health & Safety: Babies, In The News, Weird But True



A 22-month-old Massachusetts girl survived getting pinned under the tire of her parents' two-ton SUV with only a scratch on her neck, reports Good Morning America. While Sophia LaFauci's parents, Rachel and Anthony LaFauci, described the harrowing experience in a televised interview this morning, the little girl played with her Elmo doll and smiled happily for cameras.

There was nothing unusual about the events leading up to the accident: LaFauci was packing the family car for a trip and moved the vehicle in her garage. The mother has "no idea" why, but she decided to turn around to look at the car and that's when she saw little Sophia's legs and stomach pinned under the front-right tire.

"I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, but I knew that would be me losing control," LaFauci, who focused on moving the car, told GMA. "I was shaking; my body was just so scared."

LaFauci hurried back into her car and rolled the wheel off of Sophia, who had turned purple. "I screamed her name at the top of my lungs and she replied, 'Mommy,' That's when I knew she was alive," LaFauci told GMA.

After arriving at a Boston hospital by airlift, the LaFaucis world would receive another dramatic jolt. "No fractures, no internal bleeding, no head trauma, no nothing. She's perfect," LaFauci said of the diagnosis.

The news was so good, the LaFaucis are calling it a "miracle," and rightly so. Emergency rooms treat 2,400 children a year because of accidents like this one and at least two children die every week from what doctors call the "bye-bye syndrome," according to GMA and kidsandcars.org.

Sophia's miracle, in part, is not unrelated to the everyday flexibility of children, who toddle around playgrounds and homes bumping into chairs and falling off of bicycles. Marie Savard, M.D. and GMA medical contributor, explained the super-hero-like qualities of children. "A toddler's soft tissue can be resilient," Dr. Savard said. She assumes, "the pressure on [Sophia's] bones did not cause any kind of bending and the tissues were elastic, resilient," and no injury was sustained.

Whatever the medical explanation, the parents couldn't be happier. "We've been blessed with a second chance," said dad Anthony LaFauci. "We're not going to take life for granted."
How do you explain this miracle?
Definitely divine intervention!230 (71.4%)
Mother Nature! Babies are resilient.92 (28.6%)


Click here to watch the GMA interview on Morning Rush.

Tags: cars, miracle, suv

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