Man Speaks Out After Being Trapped in His Car Following Crash

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iStock/Thinkstock(LOS ANGELES) — A California man found alive three days after falling asleep while driving, swerving off a road and crashing into a ravine spoke about his experience for the first time in an interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America that aired Tuesday. He said he felt lucky to be alive.

“I’m going to change a few things and how I live from here on out because of this experience,” Hunter Kittle, 24, said, adding that during the ordeal, “I was seriously asking for God to make a decision and either get me off the hill or kill me now because I didn’t want to keep dealing with the pain and dealing with if I was going to be saved. And he made a decision. Apparently he wants something left for me to do on this earth.”

Kittle said that he had been heading home when the incident occurred a little over a week ago on the evening of Sunday, Jan. 22, in Mount Baldy, California.

“I was driving home up Mount Baldy Road, and I hydroplaned and fell off the embankment about 70 feet and slammed into a tree with the back of my car and ended up rolling over onto the passenger side, and when I came to it was the next morning,” he said.

Kittle said that he waited in his car, debilitated by his injuries and in extreme pain, for approximately three days before a passing motorist noticed his vehicle and called for help.

“It was horrible, horrible, pain,” said Kittle, who suffered injuries including a collapsed lung, fractured skull and broken leg. “I was thinking either kill me now or get me off this mountain because I can’t, I can’t do this.”

“My phone was dead and even just yelling for help after, after a few minutes of yelling, I just got extremely exhausted,” Kittle added.

Kittle said he surprised even himself that he was able to pull through and survive the incident.

“Mainly it was mind over matter, me wanting and willing myself to survive long enough to get down that hill, one way or another,” he said. “I didn’t want that to be my final chapter in my life.”

Camie Kittle, Hunter’s mom, said in an interview with GMA that her son’s story was a “miracle.”

“I don’t know any other answer,” Camie Kittle said. “The trauma doctor couldn’t believe that he sustained these amount of injuries and lived through it.”

The California Highway Patrol said in a statement that Kittle had reportedly fallen asleep, allowed his vehicle to veer off of the road, and then overturned and struck a tree on Jan. 22, 2017.

The CHP added that he was rescued on Wednesday, Jan. 25, after a passing motorist flagged down a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputy.

Rescuers carried Kittle up the mountain before airlifting him to a hospital.

Kittle described himself as “elated” at the moment the passing motorist and rescuers helped save his life.

“I was so happy, you know, that I was finally being saved,” he said. “That I still had a chance left to survive.”

The highway patrol said alcohol or drugs were not suspected to be a factor in the accident, which remains under investigation.

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