“I just caught a glimpse of the front grill of a car that looked like it was going in the wrong direction,” David Fredericksen recalls about August 11, 2014. He and his partner were driving on I-10 near Biloxi, Mississippi when David’s dash-cam recorded a tragic crash. “It was a pretty big explosion–and then the road, the car, everything—was on fire,” he says.
As flames engulfed the car, David grabbed the fire extinguisher in his truck and headed toward the scene of the accident, afraid of what he might find, “When I got out of the truck and I pulled the pin, I just automatically started praying, ‘God please don’t let me have to deal with somebody halfway burned alive, screaming, or have to see kids in here. I mean I didn’t want to see something like that. My first reaction was that they were dead,” he says.
As David fought the fire, something caught his eye. “I saw this little head pop up in the back window, and immediately, I thought, ‘Wow, they’re alive!” David recalls.
Trapped in the car were a woman and her two-year-old granddaughter. “The lady was laying in the front seat and she was trying to kick the door open,” he says. David tried to help pull the door open, and time was running out. “I heard the metal bending. I’m a pretty good-sized guy and if you watch the video, you can see that I’m struggling pretty hard to get it open,” he says.
Once more, he prayed. “At that point, you know, what else could I do?” he says. “I had never been in a situation like that before.” As other motorists came to help, the door finally broke free. “Then in the back seat, that little head, I saw it pop up again, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw some other people showing up, and I so I reached into the back seat, and I grabbed the little girl. I reached in and she grabbed me around the neck.”
While others pulled the woman to safety, David carried the granddaughter safely to the side of the interstate. “It seemed surreal that they were OK,” he says. “I mean, I didn’t think anyone could survive that, truthfully.”
David believes God intervened and used him to help rescue the two. “The car was on fire, and I didn’t burn my hands. It wasn’t hot. I believe that He protected me and protected them,” David says. “If I had been twenty seconds sooner, I would have been down the road. If it would have been ten seconds sooner, it would have been me she hit. I’ve never met that lady, but I am just very happy that I was able to help her that day.”
As David travels the nation’s highways, he’s ready and willing to be used again by God. “When you have a relationship with God, the supernatural happens all the time. God puts people where they need to be. That little girl—God’s got a purpose for her, and that’s why He protected her that day,” David says. “It just reassures me that If God needs me and he puts me in front of somebody that needs my help, then I’m going to help them. You’ve just got to listen to God.”
