{"id":146626,"date":"2018-01-16T03:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T08:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=146626"},"modified":"2018-01-16T03:00:53","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T08:00:53","slug":"aussie-dad-with-a-hunch-hired-copter-that-found-injured-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/16\/aussie-dad-with-a-hunch-hired-copter-that-found-injured-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Aussie dad with a hunch hired copter that found injured son"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"shutterstock\"<\/a>
The father said he hired a helicopter on Monday (Shutterstock photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CANBERRA, Australia — The father of a teenager who spent 30 hours trapped in a car wreck in Australian woods said Tuesday he had followed his intuition by hiring the helicopter that found his seriously injured son.<\/p>\n

Samuel Lethbridge, 17, remained in a hospital in serious condition with multiple fractures two days after the crash.<\/p>\n

His father, Tony Lethbridge, said he suspected his son may have been in a car wreck when he did not return by Sunday night to the family home at Lake Macquarie, after a Saturday night out with friends in Sydney, 130 kilometres (80 miles) to the south.<\/p>\n

The father said he hired a helicopter on Monday morning and the car was spotted in scrub off a highway 20 kilometres (12 miles) from home.<\/p>\n

Emergency services cut the boy from the wreck 30 hours after the accident, the father said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody was saying: He’s probably run away and all that kind of stuff. That’s just not Samuel,\u201d Tony Lethbridge told Seven Network television.<\/p>\n

The father recalled that a victim of an earlier crash in the area had died after not being found within five days. \u201cI wasn’t going to let that happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lee Mitchell, the helicopter pilot and part-owner of Skyline Aviation Group at Lake Macquarie, said he discounted his usual helicopter hire rate of 1,200 Australian dollars ($956) an hour when the father explained his plight.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came in looking anxious and somewhat fatigued and said he needed helicopter bad,\u201d Mitchell told the AP of meeting Tony Lethbridge midmorning on Monday at the Port Macquarie airport.<\/p>\n

The father said he had reported his son as a missing person to police and explained his fears of a car accident near home.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just said: ‘I’ve got A$1,000 ($797) on me, will that be enough?’ and we said: ‘Yes, it would,\u201d’ Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

The helicopter took off soon after with the boy’s uncle Michael Lethbridge aboard, because the father was prone to air sickness, the pilot said.<\/p>\n

The car was spotted within 15 minutes of flight, about 20 metres (yards) off the road, Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was fairly easy to spot from the air. It would’ve been near impossible to see from the road because it was well below the road level,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

The uncle was the first to reach the car.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really didn’t want to go. I was scared of what I’d find. As I got closer I seen Sam’s head move,\u201d Michael Lethbridge told Melbourne Radio 3AW.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went from being terrified to ecstatic in a couple of seconds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mitchell was hovering overhead when the uncle signalled that the boy was alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were overwhelmed. It was a great outcome. We’ve done a lot of search and rescue stuff in previous years and they don’t always turn out so favourably,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CANBERRA, Australia — The father of a teenager who spent 30 hours trapped in a car wreck in Australian woods …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":57386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[268,3167,43450,43448,43449,43447],"class_list":["post-146626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","tag-australia","tag-helicopter","tag-lake-macquarie","tag-lee-mitchell","tag-skyline-aviation-group","tag-tony-lethbridge","mauthors-rod-mcguirk","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}