Norman Wilbur heard his wife’s voice in the darkness and found her pinned beneath her own car.
The 81-year-old woman had been trapped for roughly four hours in pounding rain outside the couple’s Hingham, Mass., home on Friday night, her body wedged between the vehicle and a rock. Peggy Wilbur suffered serious injuries to her chest and legs during the ordeal, which began when the car — accidentally left in neutral — rolled backward onto her as she was outside.
Norman had been away from the house and was dropped off by a cab when he made the discovery. “I walked around, and I heard, ‘Help. Help.’ I said… ‘Peggy, is that you?’ And I looked. I couldn’t even see her because the car was up against it,” he told WHDH.
He immediately called 911. Firefighters from the Hingham Fire Department arrived within minutes and deployed airbags and a spreading safety tool to lift the vehicle off Peggy. She was then rushed to South Shore Hospital.
The rescue came after Peggy had spent hours exposed to the elements, unable to free herself from beneath the car. Her husband later noted that her age made the survival and recovery all the more remarkable. “She’ll be 82 this week, so she’s no spring chicken, as they say, but she’s a tough old Irish girl,” he said.
The Hingham Fire Department addressed the incident in a social media post, offering thoughts and prayers to Peggy and her family. Her husband indicated that she now faces a lengthy recovery process from the injuries sustained during the hours-long entrapment.
The accident occurred when the vehicle, which had been left in neutral rather than park, rolled without warning and trapped Peggy against the ground and a rock in the residential area outside Boston. The timing meant she remained undiscovered until Norman’s return by taxi, with the rain and darkness compounding the danger of the situation.
Peggy Wilbur remains hospitalized at South Shore Hospital as she begins what her husband described as a long recovery.