June Reagan doesn’t just believe there are angels among us. She knows there are. If it wasn’t for those angels, she knows she would not have just celebrated her 88th birthday on Monday.
Last October, she experienced a horrific accident that still gives her nightmares, and that’s not counting the scars she has on multiple parts of her body to remind her of the trauma and also of the miracle.
She was mowing her yard the morning of Oct. 27, 2020, on a riding lawnmower. As she was finishing up and heading back to the house, something caused the mower to stop moving. It was still running but no longer moving. She climbed off the mower to see what it was caught on and when she did, the blades automatically disengaged. She did not see anything behind the mower, so she walked to the front of it. The mower suddenly launched forward, knocking her to the ground face down in the dirt with her arms tucked under her.
The front tires of the mower ran over her. She said that wasn’t so bad and waited for the back wheels to do the same. However, due to the engine weight, the mower was not moving any further, and she was completely pinned underneath the running mower. The rotating wheels were spinning in high gear, eating away at her right hip and upper right arm. The running motor was literally pinning her to the ground with only her legs being visible. Her head and upper torso were trapped.
“It is just the feeling that I was under that mower and that I know that I couldn’t get out because I was completely pinned under except from my knees down,” she recalls.
Reagan lives alone, so there was no way to call out for help.
“I just knew I was under that mower, and I realized I was going to die,” Reagan said.
The weight of the mower was making it hard to breathe. All she could do was lay there and pray to God for peace and comfort as she was dying. She no longer felt the pain of the wheels running against her flesh. She saw a bright light as she was losing consciousness, and soon all was dark.
Brett Johnson and Jamie Lambert work for AAA Ambulance. They regularly park at Reagan’s Corner off of U.S. 98, which is sometimes done for a quicker response if something happens on the county's west side. The pair was heading back to Columbia when Lambert spotted what appeared to be a set of legs underneath a riding mower. Both thought first that it was a Halloween decoration, but almost simultaneously, they both felt it needed to be investigated.
They pulled into the driveway and stopped near the mower. As they opened the doors, the men could hear the mowing running and began to imagine the gruesome scene they were about to find. Full of adrenaline, the men were able to lift the mower and toss it to the side.
Surprisingly, Johnson and Lambert did not find the gruesome scene they expected, but Reagan was lying face first in the ground, unconscious but still alive. As they tended to her, giving her oxygen, she began to wake up and respond to questions. At first, it did not appear that she had any serious injuries. But then the paramedics discovered two significant burn wounds from where the wheels had been grinding into her flesh.
For Reagan, she was losing consciousness one minute, and the next minute she was lying on a backboard.
Once they determined she was stable enough to transport to the hospital, she was taken to two different medical facilities for burn wound treatments. She had to have a skin graft where the skin was taken from her thigh to replace the skin loss on her hip and upper arm.
Reagan spent nine days in the trauma unit at Forrest General Hospital. On her ambulance trip to the hospital, she kept asking if she was going to die. Johnson responded, “Not on my watch.”
“The Lord was looking out for me,” Reagan said.
Reagan is no longer allowed to mow the grass. Both Lambert and Johnson have checked on her since the accident.
But for Reagan’s two sons, they know it was a miracle straight from God for their mother’s life to be spared, and they are eternally grateful. That deep gratitude extends just as deeply to both Johnson and Lambert.
Note: This article stems from a written statement by Reagan’s son, Michael Ward, with permission from Reagan.
