This summer has been filled with awful news about children trapped in hot cars and the horrible things that have or could have happened to them. Thankfully this is not one of those stories.
A toddler in Knoxville, Tennessee is credited with helping to rescue an elderly man from a hot car over the weekend. Bob King, a 68-year-0ld cancer and stroke survivor was sitting in his car on Saturday at the Vestal Baptist Church, waiting for his wife. The doors to the car, which the couple said they have had trouble with, automatically locked, leaving King stuck inside the car. From Yazhou Sun at ABC News:
[King] frantically grabbed the car door, but was too weak to push it open. King panicked. Without a car key, he couldn’t turn the air conditioning on. It was 91 degrees outside that day — and the temperature inside the car had reached over 120 degrees.
King said that’s when he noticed a small child, Keith Williams, 3, near the car and began to shout for help:
[Keith] ran over to Pastor Jack Greene, who was volunteering at the benefit event, to get help.
“I was talking to someone and little Keith came behind me and kept saying, ‘Locked, locked, locked,” Greene told ABC News. Greene didn’t sense something was wrong, but then Keith started patting and pulling his hand, and kept saying “hot, hot.”
“It was hot,” Keith (aka “Little Boy”) told WVLT. “He was locked in car.” Best. Interview. Ever. Kieth’s mother said she had recently talked to her son about hot car safety (maybe because of all the horrible stories lately) which may have been why he knew to go for help. This story might just be total exaggerated bullshit because it’s way too perfect that an adorable toddler rescues a sick elderly man from hot car. This isn’t really as much of a “dramatic rescue” as it is the media picking up on a mildly interesting story of a child who happened to point something out to a grown up.
But I don’t care! Look at his adorable little face! Plus, the news station credited his “Ninja Turtle shoes” with giving him “special powers” that day, which is the sole reason this story should exist in the first. (Or this is all just a terrible viral marketing stunt to promote Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie coming out this summer.)
Screencap via WVLT.