ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. — A close call was captured on security video Thursday night when a cable company employee was trapped by a falling tree limb at the height of the storm which moved through the St. Louis area.
It happened in O’Fallon, Missouri, in Danny Gittemeier’s yard. Gittemeier had just spoken to the repair technician.
“My son was like, ‘Daddy, what was that?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, buddy.’ So, I walk out the door and see the tree down and hear him yelling for help.”
The whole thing was captured on Gittemeier’s neighbor’s Ring doorbell camera security video. Ian Campbell's camera captured the video and he posted it on TikTok.
“I came out here and he was laying with his feet down there and his head up here and he was pinned down,” said Gittemeier, giving a tour of the yard on the side of the house he rents on Knightwood Lane. “He was pinned down with his arm stuck and his face and his feet. I’m out here in gym shorts and sandals in the middle of the mud and rain, trying to figure out how to get this tree off him.”
Gittemeier said he didn’t know if he could lift the tree limb.
“But I was able to get it, with the adrenaline going, high enough to where it was off his back so he could backwards army crawl underneath of it,” he said. “That was a good sign, he was moving. It could have been a lot worse. It could have killed him.”
Gittemeier said he was shaken up by the incident.
“He’s doing OK,” said Gittemeier. “I talked to his supervisor last night. He got discharged from the hospital with an ankle brace on his leg, a bunch of pain medicine for his back, obviously, and he had a bunch of scratches on his face from getting yanked out from under that tree.”
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story failed to credit Ian Campbell for the security video. We regret the omission.