Advertisement

Mom acts as human speed bump to save kids

Mom acts as human speed bump to save kids

Moms are known to go above and beyond when it comes to protecting their kids -- even if that involves becoming a human speed bump.

Massachusetts mom Mindy Tran did just that. On March 6, the 22-year-old mother watched her car unmanned Honda Accord start to roll backward out of her garage and down a sloped driveway toward traffic.

She had momentarily left the vehicle, which was in park, to lock the front door of her new apartment.

Her two-year-old twin daughters, Saleen and Sydney, were still buckled in the back seat.

"I was like, 'What is going on?' And I see my daughter sitting there in the backseat and of course my first instinct is, 'I have to push the car back into the driveway,'" she tells WCVB.

To slow down the car, she did the only thing that she could think of.

Also see: New mom with cancer fights for life after delivering premature twins

"I had to use myself as a speed bump," she tells WCVB.

And while her quick- and sacrificial-thinking caused her to suffer a broken leg and dislocated shoulder and hip, it did slow the vehicle enough for a neighbour to be able to jump inside and bring it to a full stop.

"My daughters are my everything, my everything, and I don't want to see them in the hospital, and I knew at that time it was either mine or theirs," Tran says.

Firefighters arrived on the scene and used an airbag to lift the car off Tran.

“It is an unfortunate accident and somehow her car wasn’t in gear," Lawrence Fire Department Chief John Marsh tells ABC News, adding that Tran was airlifted to a Boston-area hospital.

Tran has been in and out of hospitals since, with surgery set for Wednesday.

Also see: Three-year-old saves mom

And even though she faces a long recovery — her knee was crushed by the car — Tran insists she'd do it again.

"It was all for my kids. I'm just glad my kids are fine."

"I don't consider myself a hero," she tells ABC News. "I am just a mother."

Tran and her daughters had just moved into their apartment days earlier. Before that, they were living in a shelter.

"It felt like I was starting a new life," she tells ABC News. "The girls had started at daycare and we just moved in. It seems like when things are going too well, something bad will happen."

Tran says she is determined to make a full recovery.

"My daughters and I are all right and keeping our heads up," she adds. "I'm lucky to be alive."