An Iowa teenager whose car plunged off a bridge and into an icy river managed to get himself help in the nick of time — and it’s all thanks to his trusty iPhone.
Gael Salcedo, 18, was driving his 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee just before 7:30 a.m. Tuesday when he hit a snow-covered patch of road, the Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s Office said in apress release.
Salcedo lost control of his vehicle, which then traveled over an embankment and into the Winnebago River below.
“I turned to the right and from there, everything just went blurry. I didn’t know where I was going and then I just didn’t know what to do,” he told CBS affiliateKIMT. “I was just thinking in my head, ‘I think I’m going to die.'”
Salcedo told the outlet he immediately rolled down his window, but was unable to call for help, as he had misplaced his phone amid the chaos.
That’s when his quick-thinking kicked in, and Salcedo called on Siri, Apple’s voice-activated virtual assistant, to reach out for help for him.
KIMT
“I lost my phone and since I couldn’t find it, I was like, ‘Hey Siri, all 911,’” he said. “And once Siri called, that’s when I found my phone finally.”
“[I] basically explained to him that there’s no other way. You’re going to have to walk out. I’ll be right there with you holding on every step of the way,” Lt. Craig Warner told KIMT.
Eventually, Salcedo managed to make his way out of his Jeep, and he was taken to Mercy Hospital, where he was treated and released, according to the press release.
“My hands were freezing. I couldn’t feel my legs anymore, so I was struggling a lot and the water was just so strong, so I kept tripping and I had the guy help me up a bunch of times and I used all my strength to get out of the water,” Salcedo said.
Temperatures at the time of the accident were around zero degrees,KIMTreported.
source: people.com
