Up Close: Young Woman Forgives Driver Who Ran Her Over

A young women run over and nearly killed by a man who fell asleep at the wheel meets with him to talk about forgiveness.

Kendal Levin, 25, ended up in a coma for weeks and was told she may never walk or speak again.

But today she’s walking and talking and she’s also reaching out to the man who ran her over.

Her incredible story of survival begins with one of the happiest days of her life – a mission call to Sydney Australia.

But one year into her service as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Kendal was hit by a car while taking a photo on the side of the road of a double rainbow.

That was September of 2014.

“This car hit me and drove up over the top of me and pinned me to the ground and my head hit the windshield shattered his windshield,” said Kendal to KSL’s Dan Rascon.

Kendal was trapped underneath the car and was saved by a neighbor who grabbed a jack to lift the car off of her.

“There was nothing physically wrong with me besides a giant bruise. No broken bones, nothing,” she said.

No broken bones, but a very critical brain injury.

“My brain shook so violently in my skull causing a traumatic brain injury causing me to have to relearn to do everything,” said Kendal.

Kendal spent two months in a coma – one doctor telling her parents she would never recover.

Before her mission Kendal was a star athlete with a full ride college basketball scholarship.

 

She played and started in all the varsity sports in highs school. Now walking up a flight of stairs is a very slow process with one step at a time, but Kendal is beating the odds.

“It’s all a miracle that I’m even alive,” she said.

Just being alive is not good enough. In May Kendal traveled to Sydney to meet the very man who fell asleep at the wheel and hit her.

“What did you say to him?” asked Rascon.  “He was helping me walk to my car and I was just like I hold no hard feelings against you. He’s like, ‘thank you Kendal, I really needed that.’ “

She also met the man who saved her life.

“I thanked him a million trillion times,” she said.

Dan Davis’s production company, Stiry, (www.stiry.com ) which does inspirational stories about people, followed Kendal to Sydney to captured that emotional reunion and story.

“When they met for the first time you could just see his countenance literally change. That peace come over him there is no resentment there is no hatred,” said Davis. “That man was truly healed in those moments with her. He actually used the word relaxed now because that guilt has been on his shoulders for five years now.

The documentary by Stiry is expected to be put together in the next couple of months and will be posted on their website.

Kendal’s life is no longer all about sports.

Her mission has changed – she now inspires others to press on by speaking to youth groups across the state.

Her message, “just keep pushing through the pain because you are not going to get anywhere by doing nothing. You got to put forth the effort to get to be where you want to be.”