A group of high school students are being hailed as heroic Good Samaritans for their efforts to save a mother and her two young children.
The mom and her children, ages 2 and 3, were walking to their car in a school parking lot Tuesday afternoon in Layton, Utah, when they were run over by a car and became trapped underneath, Lt. Travis Lyman of the Layton Police Department told "Good Morning America."
When police responded to the scene around three minutes after receiving a 911 call, a group of teenagers and school officials were already working to lift the car off the mom and her young kids, according to Lyman.
"Three minutes doesn't sound like a long time, but certainly in a critical incident like that, when stress is high, that seems like a really long time," Lyman said, adding of the students, "But they did rally and we're proud of them for getting involved and helping the way they did."
Surveillance video captured by the school, Layton Christian Academy, shows students rushing immediately to the scene to help.
Chris Crowder, the school's CEO, told "GMA" that as soon as he saw that the mom and kids were trapped under the car, he ran to get even more students to help.
"I ran back in the building to grab as many students as possible," Crowder said. "The car was just on top of them and squishing them. It was a small car, so there was very little clearance."
Crowder said that the students helped to lift the car up on one side until it was high enough that a student was able to reach under the car and pull out the mom and one of her children, while the other child was able to escape from underneath the car on their own.
"They knew what to do, that they had to do something," Crowder said of the students. "We’re very proud of them."
Senior Airman Dominique Childress said he relied on his military training when he jumped into action to help after seeing the accident while picking up his children from the school. Childress described the students who ran to the scene to help as the "real heroes."
"They’ve never had that [military] training, and so for each and every one of them to instinctively go out and do what they did in that traumatic experience is what makes them the real heroes of this story," he told "GMA." "Nobody ever told them that they were going to have to deal with something like this. They weren’t prepared for that, and they still did it."
Crowder confirmed to "GMA" that the mom in the accident, whom he identified by her first name only, Bridgette, is an employee of the school.
She was transported to a hospital, where she underwent surgery and is being treated for non-life threatening injuries, according to Lyman.
Both of her children survived with only minor injuries, according to Lyman.
Lyman said the driver of the car, who has not been publicly identified, told police that she did not see the mom and kids in front of her car.
"One of the factors in this that the driver of the car said was a part of the cause for her not being able to see these people walking through the parking lot was the time of day and the fact that the afternoon sun was in her eyes and she couldn't see," Lyman said. "She was traveling pretty slowly through the parking lot but just didn't see these people walking in front of her."
Lyman said the incident has not yet been screened by the city attorney "to determine if any charges are appropriate."
