8-year-old girl hailed hero for helping save great-grandmother trapped under car

The mother of an 8-year-old girl, who helped save her great-grandmother after she got trapped under a car, has said she’s proud her daughter “just was able to think fast” in the wake of the incident. According to Good Morning America, the January 11 incident occurred after Patricia Lynch, 79, picked her great-granddaughter Mariah up from school and dropped her off at her home in West Bloomfield.

And though Lynch doing the school run was nothing unusual, something distressing happened after she pulled up to Mariah’s home that day. The minor was said to be in the vehicle when her great-grandmother fell after stepping out. 

“She thought her car was in park but it was in reverse,” Mariah recalled. “It started moving and she tried to stop it and she fell and the tire [went] over her foot.”

After noticing what had happened, Mariah said she immediately did something she had noticed her mother and other relatives regularly do. “I pulled the keys out [of the ignition],” she said. “I didn’t know her foot was under there but I knew she could still get hurt because her body was under there.”

Mariah’s mother, Porchia Lane, was indoors at the time of the incident. So after Mariah exited the vehicle, she rushed to notify her mother. The family’s ring doorbell camera captured the moment the 8-year-old ran towards the home to get help.

“I thought it was a normal drop off and when I opened the door, I still didn’t hear her screaming initially,” Lane said. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe my grandmother was having a hard time pulling up the driveway’ because it’s a little hill. As I got closer to the car, that’s when I began to hear Mariah scream and I saw my grandmother’s shoes in the middle of the driveway. I couldn’t even see her yet. So I was just in disbelief.”

Lane said she noticed her grandmother had managed to free herself after her leg and foot got stuck under the car. “Mariah was able to go grab a towel. We wrapped her leg up and caught the ambulance,” she told Good Morning America. “She really thought fast.”

Mariah said she was scared and nervous at the time of the incident. But she later paid her great-grandmother a visit at the hospital. And fortunately, Lane said Lynch did not break any bones, adding that she received stitches and blood infusions after suffering bruises, blisters and blood loss. The 79-year-old was eventually discharged last week.

“Know that your kids are always paying attention. I really talked to Mariah and instilled in her to just follow her heart and make right decisions,” Lane said. “It just makes me proud that she just was able to think fast and she probably was more calm than me in this situation because I would have been frantic.”