A 72-year-old woman who was trapped inside of a burning car reunited with the Houston teen who saved her life.
Gloria Cage said she couldn’t be more thankful for Worthing High School student Marcus Dillard, who she believes was one of her angels.
(photo credit: ABC13 screenshot)
Cage was on her way to church Wednesday night when she hit a large pothole. She stopped to check for damage, and the power in her vehicle shut down.
“I hear the click of the door locking me in there,” the woman told ABC 13.
Within moments, Cage’s car burst into flames under the hood, and she was trapped inside with no way of getting out. The 72-year-old said she began “beating on the window, crying,” but nobody spotted her inside the burning car.
“I began to pray,” said Cage. “I can’t tell you how frightened I was.”
However, Dillard passed by once when he saw smoke coming from the woman’s car, but it wasn’t until he drove by a second time that he flipped on his high beams and noticed Cage was stuck inside.
“You could say God was telling me to turn around,” said the high school student. “I had took a firefighter class before (and) I just knew when you bust a window, you have to turn your head so glass won’t get in your eyes.”
Dillard used a car jack to shatter the windows, and his younger brother helped him pull Cage to safety.
Monica Bilbo, a Harris County sheriff deputy, went to Dillard’s high school the next day to thank him personally for saving her mother.
“When I showed up in my uniform, he was like, ‘Oh, oh, ‘I’ve never been in trouble before.’ I said and you’re not today,”Bilbo told KHOU 11. “We ended up thanking him and the students were so excited.”
Cage embraced Dillard after they were reunited on Thursday and thanked him for saving her life. The hadn’t seen each other since Cage was taken to the hospital.
Bilbo gave the teen and his little brother $100 each for their heroic actions and hopes to have them honored at Houston’s NRG Stadium by the visiting Dallas Cowboys — the brothers are both Cowboys fans — when they play the hometown Houston Texans on Sunday night.
