Sometimes people fall into situations that seem to be a complete dead end, and the only reasonable thing left to do is to look back at your life while you wait for it. On rare occasions, people seem to be capable of doing the impossible and defy all odds. We will introduce you ten of those people who escaped some horrific events and are here today to tell the tale.
1. Michelina Lewandoska
Michelina is a Polish-born UK emigrant, who used to live with her fiancé Marcin Kasprzak and their three-year old toddler son. Apparently one day Marcin decided that he was bored with Michelina’s presence in her life and he decided to eliminate her from his life, quite literally. He and his friend Patryk Borys decided that they should do it. The duo tied the young woman’s arms and legs after electrocuting her with a stun gun. They did not have a specific plan as to what to do next, so they simply put her in a big box and drove to the countryside. There, they buried her alive in a shallow grave about four inches deep and dragged a 90-pound branch over and placed it on top. She began to suffocate, but started praying in fear that she would likely die. With a twist of luck, she managed to cut through the rope with her engagement ring, after which she dug her way out. The next weeks were spent recovering and eventually she testified in court, against her attackers. They both got a 20-year sentence.
H/T – Source
2. Holly Dunn
One night in late August 1997 Holly Dunn was talking to her boyfriend Chris Maier when a strange guy close to them begged for money. They were both a bit scared, but they did not know that they should be terrified, as the man turned out to be the notorious “Railway Killer” who had already murdered six people prior to that night. He threatened the couple with an ice pick, then tied them up and threw them in a ditch. After a while he returned and smashed Chris to death with a huge rock. He continued his act of violence and raped Holly, then stabbed her neck with the ice pick and beat her so badly that her face was completely shattered. She passed out at one point, only to wake up later and find that the attacker was gone. Holly was able to get to a nearby house and was rushed to the hospital, where she was treated for her multiple injuries. After recovering she testified against the killer and the trial ended with him being sentenced to the death penalty. He received the sentence for being convicted of killing over fifteen people over a 13-year period. Holly was the only one to survive. The execution was performed in 2006.
H/T – Source
3. Alcides Moreno
Alcides Moreno is one lucky guy. He worked as a window washer alongside Edgar, his brother. They specialized in cleaning tall buildings in Manhattan and knew the risks that were involved. One day the worst case scenario happened – their working platform made a free fall from the 47th floor, which is more than 500 feet up, and crashed in an alley. Imagine the firefighter brigade’s surprise, when they found Alcides alive and fully conscious. Unfortunately Edgar was killed during the incident.
The investigating team commented that Alcides was able to ride the platform on its way down and he managed to evade the two most common and deadly injuries in such cases – breaking the pelvis and cracking the skull. He had multiple fractures and slight brain and spinal damage. His survival stunned the doctors, who claim that it is very difficult to survive even a three-story fall, not to mention a 47-story drop. Alcides surprised the medical staff again when he was able to recover much faster than the one-year period they gave him initially. Needless to say, he will never work the same job again.
H/T – Source
4. Ken Henderson
Ken and his buddy Ed Coen were fishing in the Mexican gulf back in 2012 when they noticed that water started to break into the 30-foot boat they were on. As it turned out, they noticed a bit too late and the pumps were unable to cope with the salty water. The radio and cell phone did not have proper signal and the two men could only grab some supplies and their life jackets before the boat sunk completely.
They stayed in the freezing water for more than 30 hours and tried to stay focused and conscious as long as they could. Ken decided that he must try and reach a distant oil rig by swimming, thinking it was the last hope for survival. Ed was clearly fading away.
Ken’s attempt almost failed after he became disoriented and started hallucinating. However, he got to the rig in the middle of the night, after being stranded for a day and a half and being thrown off 50 miles from the point where the boat sank. After climbing onto the rig, Ken found a phone and called his wife, who contacted the Coast Guard. They found Ed’s dead body shortly after and you can be sure that there would have been two dead bodies if Ken did not take the shot he did.
H/T – Source
5. Richard Moyer
The morning of the third day of October, 2011 seemed to be just another day for Richard Moyer. He stepped outside to let his dog Brindy run around the woods that surrounded the house. But this time things were different – Brindy rushed back immediately with a huge black bear on her tail.
The bear seemed pissed at the dog and everyone around . After the animal entered the house, it attacked Richard and his wife, Angela. She decided to step up, but quickly saw that that would be no easy task. As a result the bear went towards her, and that is when the dog jumped on the uninvited guest, giving a moment for Richard to protect his wife. He tried to keep his head down and attacked the bear himself, making the wild animal even angrier. It tossed Richard around, beating him severely and even biting his head. Everything was over as suddenly as it started – the bear just went outside and sat on the front porch. The man’s injuries were frightening – his head wound alone took 37 stitches to close.
After the medical treatment, the couple went back home and surely told the story to their 10-year old boy, who slept during the attack and did not hear a thing.
H/T – Source
6. Felix
The drug cartels in Mexico have never cherished human life as a thing that is worth something. The Gulf and the Zeta cartels have been fighting for a very long time and many people lost their lives in the drug war – thugs, journalists, members of the police force and ordinary civilians. The police forces in many regions of the country are very corrupt and actually help the cartels rather than trying to stop them and this is why the drug lords have the highest power in many parts of the country’s territory.
One 20-year old man who was only known as Felix lived through a real nightmare, which started when he was picked up by a corrupted policeman. He was taken to one of the safe houses of the Zeta cartel and was severely beaten for a whole week while the thugs called his family multiple times for a ransom. They eventually paid $5000 but that was not enough for the cartel and they wanted $5000 more in order to release him. Meanwhile Felix witnessed the torture and deaths of many members of the Gulf cartel. He was forced to spend a couple of months in and out of different safe houses, where the beating was constant and deaths were a common thing. Realizing that no other money would be paid for him, the thugs nearly murdered Felix with a heavy beating and threw him on a street. After months of recovery he considered himself lucky just to be alive.
H/T – Source
7. Bahia Bakari
Imagine a plane crashing down into the ocean in the middle of the night. Just the thought of such an event is chilling enough, but it actually happened to a flight with 153 people on board, and a little French girl, Bahia Bakari, was the sole survivor of the crash.
On the early morning of June 30th, 2009, Yemenia Flight 626 fell from the sky, crashing into the Indian Ocean. During the crash Bahia was apparently ejected from her seat. She had no life jacket on and was not a great swimmer, but she grabbed hold on a piece of debris. Later she said that she heard voices for a little while, but they soon started fading. Upon sunrise she saw that nobody else had survived but her. Around 11 a.m. she was finally discovered after spending more than nine hours in the water. Bahia was traveling with her mother, who lost her life in the tragedy. The 14-year old girl had a fractured pelvis and collarbone, but after three weeks of hospital treatment she was released.
H/T – Source
8. Paul Lessard
Paul Lessard decided to take his snowmobile for a drive around the Maine woods. The 64-year old man somehow crashed and flipped the machine over, and that is where it all began. His head got stuck under the machine and he could barely move. His body was almost entirely in an ice-cold creek and he was pretty shaken up by the cold temperatures. When night fell, the freezing weather made things even worse for him. Around 8:30 p.m. he was reported missing, but six hours later the search was discontinued due to heavy snowfall. They started searching for him in the early morning. Luckily, one man and his son, who owned an Arctic Cat dealership, saw Paul’s snowmobile and rescued him. He had already spent twenty hours in these terrifying conditions. Paul already had hypothermia and suffered from frostbite, but was able to make a full recovery.
H/T – Source
9. Jake Finkbonner
Jake Finkbonner was only five years old in 2006 when he played in the Pee-Wee League’s last basketball game for the season. He was pushed down in the last minute and cut his lip on the basketball hoop’s base. What seemed like a normal injury was soon turned into a nightmare It turns out that he contracted Strep A bacteria and his life was at risk. The bacteria is flesh-eating, and entered his body through the open wound on his lip. Soon enough, it started to literally eat his face. Doctors were observing the condition and there was hardly anything they could do, so Jake’s Catholic family prayed to Blessed Katen Tekakwitha, a Catholic-turned Mohawk Indian. Jake himself has Lummi Indian blood in his veins.
Nobody believed initially, but the infection slowed and then stopped completely. After a lot of procedures and surgery Jake’s face was slowly restored. The peculiar thing here is that the bacteria would normally just stay and most patients die within a day after infection. The boy’s recovery was the reason for Kateri to be considered a saint by the Catholic Church.
H/T – Source
10. Timothy Brown
In the early 90s everyone who got diagnosed with HIV was considered a walking dead man. There were only a few drugs that could slow down the progression of the disease into AIDS, but it could not actually be stopped entirely. AIDS patients did not take long to die. Nowadays, things have changed and an early diagnosis means there is a chance. When Timothy Brown got the HIV diagnosis in 1995, the treatment would only extend the inevitable. However, Timothy responded well to the medications. Unfortunately he was diagnosed with leukemia 10 years later. His immune system was already weak and upon introducing chemotherapy he caught pneumonia. Later he got gout with sepsis and the doctors thought that more chemo therapy would likely kill him.
Dr. Gero Hutter had no other choice but to apply a procedure that had not been tried anywhere.
He transplanted stem cells to Brown to fight the leukemia, but the cells were not from a matching donor, but from one who had a special feature – the CCR5 mutation, which means that the person’s body is resistant to HIV. Amazingly, the transplantation fixed everything, including the HIV. Timothy was cured completely and has not taken any other drugs since. The procedure is far too risky and expensive to become a standard, but it worked for him and now he is widely known to be “The Berlin Patient” – the first person in history with cured HIV disease.
H/T – Source
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