Pulse-pounding footage shows car swerve to miss runaway toddler in terrifying near-miss
Dashcam footage captured the horrifying moment a 2-year-old wearing only a diaper wandered into the middle of a busy Arizona intersection as cars whizzed past — before a good Samaritan rushed in to save the toddler.
The video, taken Friday night in Mesa, shows the little boy running into the street as a mother in her car screams and honks her horn as drivers zoom by — with some swerving mere inches from the toddler.
“When you look at the video, I’m completely hysterical because I feel hopeless,” the mother whose dashcam footage captured the horrifying incident told Arizona’s Family News. “I felt like I was mentally preparing myself to watch a child be crushed.”
The mom said she couldn’t risk using her vehicle to block traffic from the toddler because her 7-year-old son was in the backseat of her car.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to feel hopeless for long. The same footage shows as she was screaming, a heroic bystander bolts after the boy and quickly carries him to safety.
“I’m feeling overwhelmed, but just happy that the kind woman was willing to sacrifice her life to go into the road and grab him,” the mom added.
The wandering boy’s father, Alex Schabel, told Fox 10 Phoenix he wasn’t home when his kids got out, but got an alert from his doorbell camera when a stranger brought his other son, who is 9 months old, home.
“I see my door wide open with some lady holding my child, and she tells me that I have my kids running in the middle of the street,” he said.
The children’s mother, who has been struggling with postpartum depression, had stepped out for a moment and forgot to lock the door, the father told Arizona’s Family News.
While Schabel expressed his shame over the situation, the mother who caught the incident on camera said people shouldn’t be so quick to judge.
“We don’t understand the full extent of her struggles, but as a community, we should be extending grace and approaching her situation with compassion but still fully holding her accountable,” she said.
The boy’s dad said the Department of Child Services cleared his wife to be with their kids.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is also investigating and may submit endangerment charges against Schabel’s wife.
