A father and daughter who caught a 14-year-old girl who fell off a ride at a Six Flags amusement park in New York said that God put them in the right place at the right time.
Matthew Howard, Sr., 47, and his family were visiting the Six Flags Great Escape in Queensbury when the dramatic ordeal occurred, WNYT reported.
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Cellphone video from the incident shows the girl dangling from the Sky Ride as her brother, who was inside the gondola-style ride, attempts to hold onto her.
Howard, who is a father to 11 children, kept thinking that the girl could have been one of his own as he saw her in peril.
“All I was thinking about was what if that was one of mine.”
Howard’s 21-year-old daughter, Leeann Winchell, was with him on the ground when the operator stopped the ride.
“I kept wondering like, is she alive because I keep hearing them say she’s hanging by her neck,” Winchell said.
Howard said he told the girl to let go.
“That’s when I yelled up to her I said just fall, I promise I’ll catch you,” he said.
When she wiggled free, she hit a tree before falling into Howard and Winchell’s arms.
“Thank God she was there because maybe her neck would have got hurt,” Howard said of his daughter.
The impact from the fall knocked Howard out cold, and he was treated at a local hospital for minor injuries.
The next day, the father and daughter visited the girl in the hospital, but they don’t consider themselves heroes.
“She told us we were her heroes and I told her no,” Winchell said. “God put us in the right place at the right time.”
“God dropped an angel and I caught her,” Howard said.
(H/T: WNYT)