The last thing 20-year-old Ben Cameron remembers before his car flipped into a ditch on Highway 18 Wednesday morning was daydreaming to music.
The next thing he knew, he was upside down in a ditch, and the car was filling up with water.
Afraid he would drown, he had to act quickly — he popped his seat belt and started pulling himself out of the open driver side window. Then, in an incredible stroke of luck, a Killarney RCMP officer on patrol nearby jumped into the water and pulled him to safety.
BEN CAMERON PHOTO
Ben Cameron is ‘lucky to be alive’ after a Wednesday crash near Killarney.
He was covered in blood and immediately fitted in a neck brace and sent to hospital, where he learned he had only suffered minor cuts and bruises and quickly released. Considering the nature of the accident, RCMP told him he was lucky to be alive.
“It’s not every day you get called a dead man walking,” Cameron told the Free Press Saturday.
“I was very grateful to walk away alive.”
Cameron was headed southbound on Highway 18 about 10 kilometres north of Killarney at around 11:22 a.m. Wednesday, while RCMP were on patrol northbound. He said his back left tire popped and he hit the brakes, which took him across the road and rolling into the water-filled ditch on the right side of the road.
The pair of nearby officers immediately took action, with one calling an ambulance and another jumping into the ditch to help pull Cameron out.
“It was pretty shocking, and I had a lot of adrenaline coming out of my body when I got climbing up the ditch. I was just shaking, I was freezing from the cold water,” said Cameron, a life-long Killarney resident.
“I had blood all over my body, but I didn’t feel a thing and I came out with no injuries, just a few scratches and bruises.”
He said he was driving sober, safely and was wearing his seat belt, which — along with the luck of having two officers witness the crash — he credited with helping save his life.
“There was no spine injury, no concussion or head trauma, and the airbag didn’t go off, so it didn’t hit me, the roof of the car didn’t collapse either,” he said. “So I got pretty lucky.”
Turtle Mountain RCMP Sgt. Eric Descoteaux was one of the officers on site when the crash happened.
“The young driver was wearing his seat belt at the time of the collision, and that certainly helped in saving his life,” Descoteaux said in a news release sent out Friday.
“We are just so relieved that we happened to be in the right place to witness this collision and that we could respond immediately. Some days, being a first responder is heartbreaking, but because we were in the right place at the right time, and my partner jumped in that water so quickly, today was not one of those days.”
Cameron said he was thankful to the RCMP officers who sprung to action and hoped his situation would be a reminder to people to stay alert while driving.
“Make sure to focus,” he said. “It’s OK to listen to music, it’s OK to think, but when you’re driving, especially even if it’s just by yourself, or if it’s with somebody the priority that you have to think about, and your job as the driver, (is) you’ve got to be focused. You’ve got to care about everything around you.”
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press.
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