Man who found critically injured Fort Worth driver in ravine says ‘God put me there’
On Tuesday afternoon, as he drove on a highway, Gene Rains never planned on pulling off Loop 820 in west Fort Worth until his 3-year-old grandson woke up and needed to go to the bathroom.
Gene Rains, who lives in Whitney, saw a tree and figured that would be as good a place as any for Colson Rains to relieve himself.
But what happened after his grandson finished, the older Rains called a “miracle.”
“God put me there,” Gene Rains said Wednesday in a telephone interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “There was no reason for me to stop.”
As he lifted his grandson up, Rains saw the wreckage of a black Honda in a nearby ravine, and he would later see an arm on the driver’s side of the car.
“I didn’t know if it was a fresh wreck or if someone was living in that car,” Rains said. “I didn’t yell out or anything like that.”
He called 911, and repeatedly called the number to get help.
Once police and firefighters arrived, a 33-year-old Pelican Bay man was found in critical condition in the driver’s seat of the wrecked Honda, and a body was located in the passenger side of the car. Authorities say they believe the crashed car was there for days before Rains spotted it.
The Pelican Bay man remained in intensive care Wednesday at a local hospital.
“The angels were guiding him (Gene Rains),” said Rebecca Butler of Pelican Bay, the mother of the man who survived the crash. She called the Star-Telegram on Wednesday after reading an article about the accident. “My son would still be out there if it wasn’t for him. I’m so thankful for what he did.”
The name of the deceased passenger had not been released by authorities as of Wednesday.
Fort Worth police said Wednesday the accident occurred sometime in the past few days, but the crash scene had not been found previously because it wasn’t visible from the road.
Rains found the crash site Tuesday afternoon at West Loop 820 and Team Ranch Road in west Fort Worth, and police arrived about 6 p.m. Tuesday.
After calling 911 the first time, Rains left the crash site Tuesday evening and drove his family to White Settlement, which had been their original destination.
He returned to the wreckage with his son-in-law.
“The arm has moved,” Gene Rains said.
The Whitney resident called 911 a second time, left the scene, but later tracked down a police officer in the White Settlement neighborhood.
“It kept gnawing at me that I wanted to be sure that police showed up,” he said. “My head was saying nothing, but my heart was saying something else.”
Rains showed the officer photographs of the wrecked Honda while his daughter called a retired Fort Worth police officer.
Rains drove back to the ravine one last time on Tuesday, just in time to flag down Fort Worth police officers.
“You just couldn’t see the wreck from the road,” Rains said.
The accident was listed a single vehicle roll-over crash.
The driver was pulled out of the vehicle by Fort Worth firefighters, police said.
“It was so hidden, but we found it,” Rains said. “God did this.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 9:25 AM.
