14 DAY TRIAL // A man in a priest's attire has helped calm down an accident victim on a car crash scene in Missouri on Sunday morning.
Bystanders believe that she would have died without his help, but he mysteriously disappeared after the good deed.
“We’re all local people from four different towns. [...] We’ve only got one Catholic church out of three towns, and it wasn’t their priest,” says the Fire Chief in New London, Raymond Reed.
The 19-year-old female victim of the crash was in critical condition when she was brought into Blessing Hospital in Quincy, Illinois. She was submitted to two surgeries and doctors assess that her condition is now stable.
Katie Lentz was caught in the wreckage and firefighters were trying to make an extraction. According to USA Today, they had to position the vehicle upright, which could have cost Katie her life.
“I was pulled off to the side by one of the members of the helicopter evacuation team. [...] He expressed to me that we were out of time. Her condition looked grim for her coming out of that vehicle alive. She was facing major problems,” Reed adds.
Before the operation, she asked that someone pray for her, and a man in his ‘50s or ‘60s wearing a black shirt and a cleric's collar emerged from the crowd. He sprinkled oil on Reed and the firefighters standing next to her.
“This priest approached Katie and began to pray openly with her. [...] He had a bottle of anointing oil with him and he used that,” Reed recalls.
Emergency workers don't know how he got there, as the street was blocked off. He vanished just as fast.
“I have 69 photographs that were taken from minutes after that accident happened — bystanders, the extrication, our final cleanup — and he’s not in them. All we want to do is thank him. … We all go back to thank this priest, and he’s gone,” Reed explains.