This story was first published on the Kirkland Patch’s website. The full story can be found here. Also, see their story on YouTube.
On January 21st 2017, around 6 p.m., Genevieve Buckmiller, 38, was driving home after having dinner with her brother. The car radio was off because her 4-year-old son was sleeping in the backseat. She was focusing on the highway and thinking about how she’d have to carry her son from the car to bed once she got home. There was just one more exit to go before home.
Then out of nowhere, Buckmiller felt something hit her car hard. Her Subaru Outback veered out of control, first spinning, then rolling. When it stopped, she was upside-down and yelling for her son.
“He just said, ‘I’m upside down, I don’t want to fall, I’m scared,’ but I couldn’t see him,” she recalled, although the memory of the accident is till blurry.
According to Washington State Patrol, a driver had swerved into Buckmiller’s lane, hitting her car, causing it to go out of control.
Up to 10 people stopped to help and she said that she owes it to those Samaritans — and her Subaru, and especially her Diono Radian RXT car seat with its five-point harness — for preventing a terrifying accident from becoming a tragic one.
Her son was virtually uninjured, although Buckmiller was taken to a local hospital for a few injuries — a sprained ankle and wrist, cuts and a bruise on her face.