An 11-year-old is crediting his canine for saving his life after he was trapped in his house during Hurricane Helene.
Jamie Parker is forever indebted to his dog Tucker — who rescued the boy after a mudslide rocked his North Carolina home, throwing him under its stairs and into a 12-foot pile of rubble.
“I probably would have died if it wasn’t for Tucker,” he told WCNC.
“I was screaming at the top of my lungs, and my grandma couldn’t hear me. Tucker was above me, and he was barking. I heard him whining and barking.”
Parker’s grandfather, Michael Johns — home at the time of the incident with his wife and two grandchildren, Jamie and his sister, Jemma — noticed that Tucker wouldn’t budge from where he was standing.
“He stayed on top of the pile and was barking away, and I just thought he was going crazy,” he recalled to the outlet. “I didn’t realize he had located the boy!”
The pooch never moved until firefighters arrived and got Jamie out with the help of a chainsaw.
Jamie’s grandmother, Donna Johns, recalled what happened when the mudslide first hit.
“All of a sudden I felt the house go like this and I saw walls coming at me and I thought, ‘What?’” she told the outlet.
Jamie also recalled the terrifying situation.
“Then the house mudslided, and I face-planted into a wall, full body went flying,” he said.
After the crash, Donna Johns landed on the roof, and Jamie was thrown into the pile of debris.
“It felt like forever down there. I couldn’t see sunlight. I could feel water dripping on me, and I thought I was either gonna drown or run out of air,” he said.
Both Donna Johns and Jamie believed their entire family was gone.
“It was scary, I thought I was all alone,” Jamie told the outlet. “I thought they went down. I thought my family had died.”
“I had yelled for Jamie and Jemma and Michael and nobody answered me,” Donna Johns added. “I didn’t know if everybody was dead, and I was screaming my head off.”
Although Michael Johns was able to locate Jemma, he couldn’t find Jamie.
“It was raining really hard, I remember seeing the little girl, but I couldn’t find the boy,” he remembered. “I couldn’t find him, didn’t know where he was.”
Due to the trauma Jamie experienced from the harrowing ordeal, he was flown to Atrium Health Cabarrus hospital in Concord.
One of the nurses there is fostering Tucker and others have bought the family, who lost their home and all their belongings, basic essentials.
Habitat for Humanity has also started a fundraiser for the family.
Tucker was in a shelter when Jamie and Jemma used their allowance money to save him from being put down.
“He was the last dog there,” Jamie said. “When he saw us he ran right up to us.”
Years later, his four-legged friend returned the favor.
“And he rescued me,” he said.
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