Luke and Annalee Barnett were hiking to raise money for charity when the giant rock came barreling toward them.
An Arizona pastor is being hailed a hero after he was nearly crushed to death stepping in front of an 8,000-pound boulder to save his daughter. Luke and Annalee Barnett were hiking to raise money for charity when the giant rock came barreling toward them.
“I was in front of the boulder, so he could have been fine, but he literally stepped in front of the boulder, pushed me out of the way. He tried to stop it with his hands, but it was just too heavy,” Annalee, 20, told Inside Edition.
In a video taken by Annalee in the aftermath of the incident, Luke surveyed his injuries.
“My forearm’s broken for sure, and my groin got really twisted bad so I just can’t walk,” he said. His ribs and thigh bone were also broken.
The father-daughter duo were hiking to raise money to help victims of sexual abuse. They were 500 miles into the arduous 800-mile journey along the Arizona Trail.
“I’m just yelling, reaching back, trying to shove her out of the way as this boulder was kind of coming down on top of me,” Luke told Inside Edition.
Annalee hiked to a location where she could get a satellite signal and called a rescue helicopter. Two hours later, Luke was airlifted to the hospital. He spent a week recovering and learning to walk with a broken hip.
Annalee is completing the trek Saturday, and Luke says he will walk the final half-mile with her.
“What started as the adventure of our lives turned out to be the miracle of our lives, because there’s really no way that we should be alive,” Luke said.
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