Former UFC fighter Brendan Schaub has been hailed a hero after he told the jaw-dropping story of how he saved several kids from a car wreck after it was driven into an 18-wheeler in a murder-suicide attempt in California.
Schaub recalled what happened on his ‘Fighter & The Kid’ podcast, saying that he’d been driving to a restaurant with his wife when they spotted a major accident ahead of them, with a large truck jack-knifed across the road and a mangled car.
Initially hesitant to stop, fearing that it was a set-up, Schaub came to the decision to stop and try to help after spotting that there were kids on the scene begging for help.
“There’s a 6 or 7-year-old on top of the car yelling for help and I’m like, ‘Babe, that’s a f*cking kid,’” Schaub said. “She’s like, ‘Just keep going,’ and I’m like no, it’s a kid. Then he’s pointing down and there’s two other kids in the car.”
Schaub had to run past debris and through a major gas spill from the truck to get to the children, and as he was doing so he recalls another alarming scene unfolding as a Mexican man attempted to run across the road and was hit by oncoming traffic, though he somehow survived, got back up and made it across to the other side.
Deciding that the kids were his main priority, Schaub pressed on and sought to free the kids from the vehicle.
“The car’s all f*cking mangled, and there’s one other guy there who’s on the scene, maybe it’s the truck driver, I’m not sure, but me and him are the first ones on the scene,” Schaub said. “There’s two kids and there’s a bigger kid and he keeps going, ‘I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die,’ and I go, ‘You’re not going to die, buddy, you’re not going to die.’ I tell the guy back up, so I grab the door but it’s mangled from the crash, so it’s intertwined with the car.
“So I break the window, we break some of the window out. It’s already broke, I’m not like f*cking Captain America, so I’m pulling all the shattered glass and I take the kid through [the window].
The youngest child then began calling out for his mother, who was in the front seat, at which point Schaub made a stomach-churning discovery.
“I look and in the front is a lady who passed away,” Schaub said as he fought back tears. “Brain matter everywhere, blood everywhere, and the kid’s going ‘mama, mama’ and I go, ‘Bubba, look at me, don’t look over there.’ He was so young, it would have completely f*cked him up. I go, ‘Look at me, don’t look over there, look at me.’”
Schaub was then able to pass the kids on to another woman who had emerged on the scene, and then went back to his own family and drove off.
The former fighter has since been in contact with the authorities about what he saw and did that night, and also was able to discover the nightmarish details behind how the incident had occurred, with the Mexican man he had spotted getting hit on the road turning out to be the father of the children, who had purposefully driven into the truck in a murder-suicide attempt.
He’s since been named as 34-year-old Cesar Iban Torres and he’s now been charged with the murder of his wife, 26-year-old Aimee Garcia, in addition to the attempted murder of his children as well as child abuse, assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest.
As for Schaub, he’s understandably been left traumatized by what happened, but he’s vowed to help pay for the funeral costs and is now trying to figure out how best he can help the children.
A GoFundMe page in memory of Aimee Garcia is available for anyone who would like to donate, with the initial target of $30,000 having now been surpassed, with the total at the time of writing having reached over $60,000.
