Surveillance footage captured the moment a good Samaritan likely saved a baby’s life.
In footage from Monday obtained by Houston CBS affiliate KHOU, a woman near a car wash in Hesperia, California, can be seen searching through the back seat of her car with a baby in a stroller right behind her. (See video below.)
Suddenly, a gust of wind pushes the stroller toward the busy, four-lane Bear Valley Road. The woman, later revealed to be the baby’s great-aunt, attempts to catch the stroller, but she slips and then struggles to get back up.
Right before the stroller is about to collide with traffic, a man can be seen running after it and grabbing it at the last second.
“I knew I could get it and I got it, and I’m thankful for that because I really wouldn’t want to see the end result if I wasn’t there,” Ron Nessman, the man who saved the baby, told the news station NBCLA.
Nessman’s sister, Donna Gunderson, told the outlet that typically “cars do 50-55” miles per hour on the road and said, “It was a busy time of day.”
Nessman was reportedly sitting outside of the car wash on a bench after applying for a job at a nearby Applebee’s when he saw the baby’s great-aunt lose control of the stroller.
“She sees the child going into the street and that’s all she sees,” Nessman told KHOU. “She can’t do nothing.”
He added: “I felt so bad for the lady. I got nephews and nieces, and I couldn’t imagine something like that.”
Nessman told KHOU that he imagined the kind of distress the baby’s great-aunt would be in if the baby had collided with traffic because he experienced a tragedy of his own not so long ago.
“My girlfriend passed away in 2018,” Nessman said, adding that he didn’t want to do anything after the loss.
Nessman told NBCLA that he’s been living with his sister for the past three months after being homeless and is trying to piece his life back together.
“I decided to get right. If you want something different in your life, you’re gonna do something different, and that’s where I’m at today. I thank my sister for helping me out. She’s always been there for me,” he said.
Gunderson said she hopes the heart-stopping footage is viewed as a teachable moment for people — and noted that caretakers should always double-check that the wheels of strollers are locked when parking one.
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