Jazz Star Donovan Mitchell Helps Car Crash Victims, Social Media Explodes
Apr 23, 2019, 6:22 PM | Updated: 6:24 pm
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — We’ve all done it before.
You come upon the scene of a car crash and you slow down to see what’s going on.
Margarita Terry was near West Temple and 400 South in downtown Salt Lake City this past Sunday afternoon when she saw two cars.
What got her attention, though, was the person she noticed who stopped to help.
“Obviously, I noticed his shoes first, what he was wearing,” said Terry. “But, then I looked up and I had mentioned to my husband, ‘hey that’s Donovan Mitchell’. And my husband had rolled down his window and asked, ‘hey, Donovan, is everything okay?’ And he replied ‘we good, thanks’. So, it was pretty cool.”
Terry took pictures of Mitchell at the crash scene and posted them to her social media accounts.
She had no idea it would be shared thousands of times.
“Yeah, we were just stopped at the light and you could tell that he was trying to help the woman driver,” said Terry. “I think that’s exactly why I posted the picture I posted, it’s normally an anomaly to see someone in that type of profession, a professional athlete or anything like that.”
It’s important to take note police say no one was seriously injured in this crash.
Of course, law enforcement officers, firefighters, and paramedics do this type of work all the time
— Margarita Terry (@Atiragram00) April 23, 2019
Even everyday people stop to help at car crashes and they don’t even up on the news are shared on social media.
This is a story that is being shared because there’s a certain excitement Jazz fans have about seeing Mitchell seemingly everywhere.
Just ask KSL TV Sports Director Jeremiah Jensen.
“Donovan wants to be out and about. He wants to be part of the community. He wants to be normal. He wants to be a real human being, and that’s, I think, the draw to him and that’s why people here in Utah connect to him so much is because he does feel like he’s one of us,” said Jensen.
There is video on social media of Mitchell giving away his shoes to fans, backpacks to school students, and visiting sick children at Primary Children’s Hospital.
There are also stories of him buying an iPhone for somebody at an Apple store who couldn’t afford the repairs for a broken phone, giving out a scholarship to the daughter of one of his former teachers, and even him showing up at a random July 4th BBQ pool party.
“It’s genuine,” said Jensen. “He cares about this community and he shows it by his actions.
So, in a way, it’s not surprising to see him helping at a crash scene.
In fact, you almost expected him to be there.
“I think it’s awesome to see someone like that in our community,” said Terry.
