A pair of hunters were in the Wyoming wilderness on Sunday morning when they heard a loud crash and discovered a plane had gone down nearby. Neither Steve Atencio nor JR Larsen could get cell reception, so Atencio used his GPS device to send out an SOS signal. Then despite the thick smoke and difficult terrain, the men — who both have rescue training — rushed toward the crash to see if they could help.
When they arrived at the site, Larsen called out and heard the pilot respond. The pilot was lying face down, injured, and said he thought his back was broken, though he could still move his limbs. He also told the rescuers that his passenger, a 78-year-old woman, didn’t survive the crash. With the fire spreading toward the pilot, Atencio and Larsen quickly worked to pull him to safety using a makeshift harness.
The hunters successfully moved the pilot to a safe distance before a rescue helicopter arrived and transported him to a hospital in Montana. Looking back on the incident, they say it felt like fate brought them to that location at that time. “Nothing about where we were headed was part of the plan,” Larsen says, “For whatever reason, that’s where we were put.”
Source: NY POST
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