Friends save man pinned under car in West Valley City
Aug 8, 2022, 6:15 PM | Updated: 6:34 pm
WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — It was a terrifying scene in West Valley City Sunday night after a reckless and speeding car flew off of Redwood Road and into a crowd of people, trapping one man underneath.
The crash occurred at the Redwood Apartments at 4000 S. Redwood Road.
Cell phone video obtained by KSL shows the chaotic scene as people are screaming after the car landed on 26-year-old Neptali Gutierrez.
It’s a memory his girlfriend, Fabianna Sulbaran, can’t get out of her mind.
“To see him under the car,” she said. “All of [his friends] thought in that moment that he was dead.”
Gutierrez has a broken elbow and collar bone, and is bruised and emotionally scarred from the accident that happened just in front of his apartment complex.“He didn’t remember. He just remembered that he was under the car and he was saying to a friend, ‘Don’t let me die,” Fabianna said, translating Neptali’s interview into English.
According to police, the driver of the car was 29-year-old Gabriel Yates.
Fabianna said Yates could care less about what happened and was trying to leave the scene after running over her boyfriend, but the crowd that had gathered would not let him leave.
“I feel, like, angry,” she said. “He didn’t care. My boyfriend could have died right there in that moment and he didn’t care. He was just saying I want to go home get to my apartment and just that he didn’t care.”
Exclusive: incredible story of survival. West Valley may run over by an out of control car . His friends lifting the car off of him. @KSL5TV at 5 and 6 pic.twitter.com/nB1Z1gIkvQ
— Dan Rascon (@TVDanRascon) August 8, 2022
Neptali is also upset about the driver’s reaction.
“The man doesn’t care about nothing,” he said. “He didn’t help.”
Fortunately, Neptali’s three friends were all there and jumped into action to actually lift the Toyota Corolla off of Naptali to save his life.
The friends said they did not know how, just the three of them, managed to pick up a 2,800-pound car off their friend.
“The car was under him like right here,” said one of the friends. “[We] don’t know how we did it.”
They believe it must have been the adrenaline they were feeling.
Police say the driver was impaired and Fabianna believes he’s now a danger to society.
“He’s a dangerous man. He can do it again and he doesn’t care,” she said.
