The Truckload Carriers Association, or short TCA, named truck driver Rodney Clay from Riverview, Florida, a Highway Angel for stopping on March 4, 2024, to help a mother and daughter when he saw that their car flipped on a busy highway in Kansas and crashed into the road median.
TCA said that their car had flipped, hit the ground, slid, and crashed into the fast lane wall.
Clay and a 30-year-old Marine veteran got out of their vehicles and approached the car, noticing that the airbags were deployed.
Clay said that he saw a car practically in the air and flipping. Nobody was stopping, so he pulled over about 100 yards in front of the car off the interstate 435 in Lawrence, Kansas. He then ran towards the car and saw that it was smoking, and that fluid was leaking.
According to TCA, Clay lifted the passenger side airbag and was afraid of what he was going to see and what he found was a young girl inside, screaming and shaking. The girl’s mother was bleeding from her mouth.
Because the mother and daughter would need more help, Clay stood in the way of traffic and stopped another tanker truck, who’s driver got out to assist in the rescue mission.
Clay said that he told the women, they will have to get out of this car now because it is smoking bad and that he was afraid that it was going to blow up.
He also said that the young girl would not feel her hips, so he and another trucker pulled her and her mother out of the vehicle and moved them away.
The girl then used Clay’s phone to call her dad, but he did not answer and soon after paramedics arrived, Clay left and ended up texting her father, telling him what happened.
According to TCA, the father was “grateful for the message” and called Clay later that day to personally thank him for helping his family.
Clay, also a father of six children, said why he stopped to help because he thinks about paying it forward.
“If it happened to any of my kids, I’d want somebody to stop,” he said
Rodney Clay and the rescued mother and daughter.
Courtesy of Truckload Carriers Association
