Skip to footer

8-year-old Mass. boy helps save dad trapped in car

An 8-year-old Massachusetts boy helped save his dad trapped in a car crash early this morning. The 8-year-old Massachusetts boy was in the car, but was able to get out and seek help. 

|
CBS Boston
An 8-year-old Massachusetts, pictured, sought help for his dad after the car they were in crashed onto a river sandbar.
  • By Staff Associated Press

| Fitchburg, Mass.

An 8-year-old Massachusetts boy is being credited with helping saving his father after their car crashed through a guardrail and landed upside down on a sandbar in the middle of a river.

Authorities say Eugenio Garcia of Fitchburg was trapped in the vehicle in the Nashua River after the crash, which occurred at about 3 a.m. on July 4.

But his son, 8-year-old Joshua, wriggled out the wreckage, waded through the rushing water, scaled an embankment, then walked more than half a mile home to alert his mother, who called 911.

Mr. Garcia was rescued at about 3:30 a.m., then treated for minor injuries and released from a hospital.

Fire officials say if the car had landed in the water, it would have been fatal to both father and son.

The crash remains under investigation.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 8-year-old Mass. boy helps save dad trapped in car
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2013/0705/8-year-old-Mass.-boy-helps-save-dad-trapped-in-car
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe