Minutes into a 911 call a Florida driver realizes what smashed through her windshield
“Something just came through the windshield and hit my mom in the head!” a woman cried out to a 911 dispatcher after she pulled over on Interstate 95 while driving to Daytona Beach on Wednesday.
On the 911 call, the driver, heeding directions from the dispatcher, works to stem the bleeding, using towels. She had managed to flag down another driver, too, who was helping out.
“There’s so much blood,” the driver says.
According to a report in Click Orlando, the injured woman, who suffered a gash to the forehead, was a passenger with her daughter. She’s 71 and never lost consciousness, her daughter told the dispatcher.
At first, the projectile seemed a mystery.
“A piece of concrete? It came flying through the glass.”
Three minutes into the call, the driver and the Good Samaritan identified the object.
“There’s a turtle in there!” the caller said, seemingly incredulous.
“A turtle?” the dispatcher asked.
“A turtle! An actual turtle,” the woman answered.
The pair were heading north near Port Orange, Florida, when the turtle came crashing through their ride. Mom is expected to be OK, according to Fox 35 in Orlando. So is the turtle, which just had scratches to its shell and was released into a nearby woodsy area.
Road debris smashing into windshields is not uncommon. Neither, apparently, are turtle projectiles in Florida.
Troopers figure the turtle must have been nicked by another car and was cast aloft into the mother and daughter’s car.
In May 2016, a turtle torpedoed through a woman’s windshield on Interstate 4 in Deltona. Both turtle and startled driver were OK in that one, too.
Turtles have crashed into car windshields in Georgia and South Carolina, too, in May 2020 and May 2019, respectively.
This story was originally published April 22, 2021 at 2:34 PM.
