6-Year-Old Helps Save Mother's Life After Crash; Family Reunites With Woman Who Stopped To Help
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Lush, sprawling trees line busy Grand Avenue in Lindenhurst.
"There's a spot on Grand Avenue where the water collects up, and I hydroplaned through that water and lost control of my car. That's the last thing I remember," said Elizabeth Benson.
She said she ended up in between two trees.
Chunks of her windshield and other mangled car parts are now impaled into the tree where she crashed.
"Another extra 15 minutes I would have been dead. That would've been it. I bled out internally," she said.
Benson spent nine days in the hospital. Six were in intensive care. She suffered a shattered shoulder, broken ribs, and a punctured lung.
"My spleen had to be taken out," she said. "They had to sew up my stomach and my intestines."
But the biggest reason she even made it to the hospital is her daughter, she said. Jennine Manarpaac, who is 6 years old, was sitting right behind her mom in the back seat during the crash. She was somehow uninjured and crawled out of the car.
"Because I saved my mommy they said that I'm a hero," Jennine said.
Little Jennine walked along Grand Avenue in the dark -- it was after 10 p.m. -- knowing her mom was hurting.
"I wanted Mommy to get better," she said.
"I noticed a car in the bushes," said good Samaritan Trina Martinez.
Martinez thought she saw headlights in the dense trees as she drove along Grand Avenue, but at first she kept going.
"I questioned it, so I turned back around," she said. "When I pulled up I heard her daughter crying for help."
Martinez found Jennine, who led her to the mangled car with her mom inside. Martinez called 911.
"She was crying for help and saying, 'Help my mom. It hurts,'" Martinez said. "I'm grateful I did turn back, and she needed the help.
For the first time since the crash Benson met Martinez, and there really was only one thing left to say.
"Thank you for saving me," Benson said.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help cover costs during Benson's recovery.