By Julia Zaher
Flint Journal
Copyright 2007 Flint Journal
All Rights Reserved
ATLAS TWP., Mich. — By all accounts, Goodrich High School senior Bradley Armstrong should be dead. The two people credited with saving his life immediately after a July 22 car crash believe there’s only one way to explain the teen’s survival.
“I give all the credit to God. I believe that God was looking out for that boy that day. I believe there was intervention beyond what we did,” said Grand Blanc Township police Officer Wes Evans.
“It was definitely a miracle in God’s hands. I’ve never seen anything like that or been a part of anything like that,” said intensive care nurse Nancy Arellano of Grand Blanc Township.
Bradley, 17, was critically injured in a two-vehicle crash that shut down Saginaw Street near Hill Road for several hours. Witnesses told police that he pulled out into the a path of a pickup truck driven by a Grand Blanc woman.
Amazingly, Evans came upon the scene on his way to another police call and Arellano, out shopping with her 4-year-old daughter, was right behind and stopped to offer help. The scene was not good. Bradley was pinned in the car and his face was bleeding profusely.
“He was not breathing. He was changing colors,” Evans said. “I thought at that point he was in his last throws of life.”
Arellano, who works at Genesys Regional Medical Center, and Evans had to figure out how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the crushed car. They laid Bradley’s seat down and worked from the back seat.
“I was so scared at that point because I knew I was losing him,” Arellano said.
But Bradley, a member of the high school wrestling team, was strong and responded to CPR. The two managed to keep him breathing. Paramedics and emergency medical technicians arrived - four burly men who together lifted Bradley out of the Pontiac Grand Am, strapped him to a back board and rushed him to Genesys.
Bradley’s sister, Emily, 14, and the other driver, Genevieve Riopelle, 27, were injured and hospitalized as well. Both were released the next day.
Bradley’s parents, Amiee and Blair Armstrong, were out of town when they got the call that their children were involved in a serious accident.
“It was a long drive,” Amiee Armstrong said.
Many of Bradley’s teammates were out of state at a competition, but word spread fast. Wrestlers began to call and text message their parents back home asking them to check on their friend.
Arellano, 32, said she didn’t sleep that night, going over and over the scene in her head, wondering if she did everything correctly.
The former Marine has been an RN for less than three years.
The next day she requested to work as Bradley’s nurse. He was in the intensive care unit, sedated after suffering a concussion, a fractured jaw and a fractured sinus.
Arellano met Bradley’s parents and his sister, who remembered the nurse from the crash scene.
“They’re an amazing family,” Arellano said.
Members of the Grand Blanc Police Department circled through the hospital to check on Bradley. By Tuesday he was out of intensive care and talking.
“I was like crying I was so happy to see him doing so well,” Arellano said.
On Wednesday, Bradley left the hospital.
“He had one single stitch in his hand, that’s it,” his mother said.
“Somebody was watching over him.”
“We’ve had so much of the community and the churches and people calling. It’s amazing. You find out how many people are out there, how many care,” Amiee Armstrong said. “The wrestling family, too, has really been there for him.”
Evans and Arellano are people with deep religious faith. Arellano said she prays every day that God will guide her hands when she’s working.
“I do believe the good Lord was looking out for him that day,” Evans said.