HEROIC
RESCUE

Topics: Cross; Fathers; Heroes; Jesus Christ; Love; Redeemer; Sacrifice; Salvation; Unselfishness

References: John 15:13; Romans 5:8; 2 Corinthians 5:15

David Saunders, forty-two, waited on the driveway of his home in Hanover, Michigan, for his daughter Danielle, four, to get off the school bus. A pickup truck was stopped behind the bus. Saunders crossed the street to meet Danielle at the bus, and then the two crossed the street together and stood in the Saunders’s driveway.

Suddenly the father noticed that a car behind the bus was traveling too fast to stop before entering the crossing zone. The car swerved to avoid the pickup and headed into the Saunders’s driveway. Saunders grabbed Danielle by the arm and flung her away from himself and into their front yard.

The car hit the father and killed him. Danielle was treated for minor injuries at a nearby hospital and soon released. The sixteen-year-old driver and a fifteen-year-old passenger were not injured.

“It was a heroic act by a father to save his child,” said Tony Philipps, the sheriff’s captain. “He did everything he could, and in the process, he lost his own life.”

—“A Father’s Love,” Detroit Free Press (November 19, 2000)