Ascott
Pena
Melvin Ascott looks at where his right arm used to be and believes he would have bled to death by a dark Florida highway if a young Palm Coast man and his friends had not rescued him.
Ascott, 52, and his wife Donna, 49, his daughter-in-law, Tammy Hicks, 22, and his granddaughter, Alexis Hicks, 5, were trapped in their 2008 Ford Edge after it skidded off a wet Interstate 75 in a heavy thunderstorm south of Lake City and crashed into some trees.
Stunned, confused and in a daze, Ascott remembers hearing voices and strange faces peering into the vehicle that July 11 night.
The good Samaritans were Nicholas Peña, 20, Erik Diaz, 21, Joshua Frost, 21, and Chris Dowda, 21, fraternity brothers returning from a Kappa Sigma Leadership Conference in New Orleans. Peña is a Matanzas High School graduate who now attends the University of Central Florida.
"Absolutely, they saved my life," Ascott said as he checked out of Shands Hospital in Gainesville on Tuesday.
Peña said he was driving and had just gotten on I-75 from Interstate 10 when he saw the brake lights of the vehicle stuck in the trees.
As Diaz called 9-1-1, Dowda and Peña ran to the car and got Hicks and the 5-year-old out of the car. Once Donna Ascott was safely removed from the wreck, Peña returned to the car for Melvin Ascott.
"I remember hitting the ditch after the car hydroplaned off the road; it lost a wheel and then it hit the trees," Melvin Ascott said. "I don't remember anything after that. I didn't even know I lost my arm until them boys showed up."
Someone was shouting to his friends to get him some things to make a tourniquet, Melvin Ascott said. That someone was Peña, who tried to get Dowda's belt to tie around Melvin Ascott's severed arm. The belt did not work so Frost got Peña a T-shirt and with a screwdriver made a tourniquet, which he wrapped tightly on Melvin Ascott's arm to slow the bleeding.
"He saved my life," Melvin Ascott said of Peña. "How many 20-year-olds can put on a tourniquet or think about one in a situation like this?"
"It was just amazing to me. It was beyond his years."
As Melvin Ascott landed in Ontario late Tuesday night and headed for Windsor, his thoughts were with Peña and his friends.
"I will write him a nice thank you letter and offer some support for him and his fraternity," Melvin Ascott said. "I hear the fraternity is in financial trouble and they are trying to keep it running."
Peña said it is "cool" that Melvin Ascott wants to help but he said it is not expected.
"It's enough knowing that he is alive and that his family has been in contact with us," Peña said.
Melvin Ascott's family said they are thankful to Peña and his friends and they were a godsend at the time of the accident.
"Without them, it could have been worse," said Debbie Poirier, Melvin Ascott's sister-in-law in an e-mail to The News-Journal. "He's (Melvin Ascott) awake and totally aware of his condition, his spirit is good and he's still in a lot of pain but he's still with us and his family."
Doctors could not reattach Melvin Ascott's arm. He will wait for his arm -- a 2 1/2- to 3-inch stub -- to heal before he can have surgeries done to his face.
"He is doing amazingly well," said Rosemary Glass, Melvin Ascott's sister.
Glass said she got the news of the accident from a nephew and when she heard the story of Peña and his friends, she uttered, "Oh my God, they saved his life."
Local Hero
Linear Mode
