ABINGDON, Va. — An otherwise normal afternoon turned into a fight for survival when a several hundred-pound lawnmower tipped over, pinning its elderly rider for about five hours.
Martha W. Mitchell was almost finished mowing her lawn when it tipped and trapped her leg and foot beneath it, according to TriCities.com.
She said she believed she’d die there, trapped under the mower and burnt to a crisp after it exploded; she thought she smelled smoke and heard gasoline dripping from the recently filled tank.
“I thought I was totally trapped,” she told TriCities.com. “I have [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and I couldn’t holler and I started to pray. I said, ‘Lord, give me a strong voice to holler for the neighbors,’ and I did holler. But after about an hour, a voice spoke to me and said, ‘Nobody’s gonna come, Martha.’”
So she broke a handle off of a bucket to use as a shovel.
“I started digging and digging a trench like a gully by my leg,” she said.
She finally got the trench deep enough to free her leg and crawl away from the mower to the house, where she stayed for two days before calling an ambulance.
"[The doctor] said all my innards were very badly bruised,” Mitchell said. “And I broke my pelvis very badly. I never knew it was so painful.”
Mitchell returned home a week later and recovering.