BELLEVILLE, Ill. — A man was taken to a hospital with serious injuries after spending the night trapped in a tree in Belleville.
Firefighters from the Belleville Fire Department were called to Bicentennial Park after someone on the trail saw a man stuck in a tree.
The 38-year-old man was approximately 4 feet off the ground with his knee stuck in the fork of the tree, firefighters said.
He told firefighters he was chased into the tree by a dog around 8 p.m. Tuesday and could feel nothing from his knee down due to the compression of being trapped in the tree.
Firefighters said due to the fact there was no circulation from the knee down, the decision was made not to free him from the tree until he could be transported immediately to surgery in order to try and save as much as his leg as possible. They used a battery-operated rescue tool spreader that’s used on car accidents to spread the tree in order to get his knee out.
