A four-month-old baby has been found alive “by the grace of God” his parents said after the child was sucked up into a tornado in Tennessee.
The couple said a deadly tornado on Saturday tore apart their mobile home, picking up a bassinet with the baby still inside of it.
He survived and was discovered in a fallen tree in the pouring rain.
The baby, his one-year-old brother and parents only suffered from minor cuts and bruises.
As the tornado approached, the mother of two, 22-year-old Sydney Moore, said the roof of their mobile home was ripped off.
“The tip of the tornado came down and picked up the bassinet with my baby, Lord, in it,” Moore told a local news station. “He was the first thing to go up.”
Her boyfriend – and the boy’s father – lunged to protect Lord in the bassinet, but ended up getting picked up by the tornado, too.
“He was just holding on to the bassinet the whole time, and they went into circles, he said, and then they got thrown,” Moore said.
As that was happening, Moore grabbed her one-year-old son, Princeton.
“Something in me just told me to run and jump on top of my son,” Moore said. “Literally the moment I jumped on him, the walls collapsed.”
“I was being really crushed. I couldn’t breathe,” Moore recalled.
After the tornado passed, Moore was able to escape the crush of the rubble with Princeton. She and her boyfriend immediately started searching for Lord.
After looking for their baby in the pouring rain, they found the child – alive – in what Moore says “looked like a little tree cradle”.
“I thought he was dead,” Moore said. “I was pretty sure he was dead and we weren’t going to find him.”
“But he’s here, and that’s by the grace of God.”
Moore’s sister, Caitlyn Moore, has started a GoFundMe to help them after the tornado completely destroyed their car and home.
The children and Moore escaped with only minor cuts and bruises, but her boyfriend suffered a broken arm and shoulder, Caitlyn Moore says.
According to the GoFundMe, Lord “looked like he was placed on the tree gently” – as if “an angel guided him safely to that spot”.
“I will die for my kids. That’s not even a question. And my boyfriend would do the same thing,” Moore said. (BBC)
