‘Shocked and thank God.’ 16-year-old driver of Chevy truck describes surviving Texas tornado

The 16-year-old Texas driver of a pickup truck that was flipped and spun around by a tornado in Elgin on Monday wasn’t scared.

Riley Leon didn’t have time to be, he said.

Leon described his harrowing 10-second nightmare to ABC Austin’s KVUE in an interview that was shown on “Good Morning America.” He escaped the storm with only scratches on his left arm. Although his 2004 red Chevrolet Silverado is a little worse for the wear.

“I’m thankful to God for giving me another chance in this world,” Leon said in the video. “He probably left me here because I have something special coming my way.”

Leon said he was returning home after a job interview in Elgin when hard rains caused him to miss a couple of u-turns on the highway.

“Out of nowhere the tornado came in and it caught me, he said. “I knew there was going to be bad weather but I never expected the tornado to be at the same moment I was at. There was a ditch and it took me there and then it took me out to the street and that’s when I was spinning with the truck.”

The 130-mph winds flipped his truck onto its right side, spun it around 360 degrees and then, amazingly, flipped it back up onto four wheels.

“I wasn’t scared that much but it was a shocking moment for me,” he said. “Like a carnival game, those ones that flipped you over. It was fast. I didn’t feeling nothing because it was like in a blink of an eye.”

He was able to continue driving down the road before pulling over when he was sure the storm had passed. Besides some scrapes on his left arm and some pain in his right arm, Leon’s biggest concern is the health of his truck.

“I stepped out of my truck and that’s when it hit, that I lost something I treasured in life,” he said. “A lot of scratches and a lot of dents, but I’m going to work hard to hopefully fix it or buy a new one. I put a lot of effort in showing my parents that I could take of something.”

According to the National Weather Service, the Elgin tornado was rated an EF2 with winds of 130 mph and a track length of 14 miles.