Man Survives Being Impaled After Tree Crashes Through Car During Storm: ‘We Were Both in Shock,’ Says Wife
"We didn’t know the severity of the damage until my husband looked down and saw he got stabbed in the stomach twice from the large branch," Laura Ballweg said
Go Fuund Me
A Georgia man is on the road to recovery after being impaled by a tree branch while driving through a storm with his family over the weekend.
Anthony Sotelo, wife Laura Ballweg and their 8-year-old son were driving during a thunderstorm on Sunday when a tree fell on their car.
Ballweg told Fox affiliate WAGA-TV that the incident happened without warning. "If anybody knows the movie Final Destination, we've always been paranoid of that. That is what it felt like," she told the outlet. "We were both in shock."
In an emotional message shared on a GoFundMe page, Ballweg said they were driving in Sandy Springs when "an entire tree fell down and crashed through our front window."
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"We didn’t know the severity of the damage until my husband looked down and saw he got stabbed in the stomach twice from the large branch," she wrote.
She dialed 911 and told her husband to keep pressure on the wound after he pulled the branch out of his stomach. An ambulance quickly arrived and rushed him to the hospital.
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Ballweg and her son only sustained cuts from shattered glass, but Anthony had to undergo emergency surgery after the branch "obliterated" his navel and passed through his abdomen, Ballweg wrote on the fundraising page.
Fortunately, Ballweg told WAGA-TV the branch missed her husband's internal organs and that doctors were even able to repair his hernia.
"The surgery went great," she said. "He's a trooper. He was making jokes the whole time. If you know my husband, that's normal. But in such a time of scariness, I can't believe that he was still so positive."
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Ballweg told CBS affiliate WANF-TV that the family is "grateful to be alive."
"What if it was bigger, longer, stronger, more branches? It could’ve been so so much worse," she told the station.
However, the family still faces a difficult road ahead and Ballweg said her husband won't be able to return to work "for at least two months."
"We will have emergency medical bills, and physical therapy due for payment," she wrote on the fundraising page, which has raised over $4,000 as of Thursday. "We ask for kindness and support through this horrible situation and appreciate all the outpouring love we have been continuously been receiving."
The Sandy Springs Police Department and the family did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.
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