Father saves his son from falling power lines
By Jacob Murphy
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WILTON, Maine (WMTW) — What started as a pleasant spring day quickly came crashing down for one Wilton family. Scott Towers was visiting his brother’s home with his wife and three kids Tuesday afternoon. Their short walk home quickly turned for the worse when thunderstorms caught them by surprise.
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve never experienced anything like the weather that had come through here,” Towers said.
His brother only lives about two houses down in the Arkay Mobile Home Park. It takes less than two minutes, but even in that short time, Towers says
“It was like a bomb went off. The poles all started to snap and come down around us, and the trees were all started popping,” he said. “My wife had told our kids to run home because we really thought it was a tornado coming through. It was that extreme.”
Towers admits what happened next was a blur. He was running home with his son when one power line had fallen nearby, and he could see the power lines were going to land directly on him and his son.
“I shoved him forward, and when I shoved him forward, the lines dropped right in front of me,” he said. “The lines literally fell in my hands, and I just had to hold on to them because my son was right there. When I held on him, it threw me backwards about four or five feet onto the ground, and I completely blacked out.”
Towers’ brother and neighbors saw and heard what had happened, and came rushing to his aid.
“I had seen him collapse on the ground. Me and his brother went over to try and see. He wasn’t breathing, he wasn’t moving,” said Tyler Steadman, who lives across the street.
His brother, Dustin Towers, says he attempted some chest compressions on him. Eventually, he was able to wake him. “I grabbed him by the head and I shook him. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through.”
Scott Towers was taken to the hospital, but thanks to his quick reflexes, the rest of his family only had minor scrapes and bruises. Towers says electricity had traveled through his hand out of his elbow.
He was back home Wednesday morning, now with a heart monitor as a precaution.
“I would do it time and time and time again. You know, it’s not necessarily that I went out of my way to grab [the power line]. I had to catch it, or it was going to land on my son, and there was no question about that,” Towers said.
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