A three-year-old Australian girl, who was blessed by Pope Benedict XVI when he was in Sydney recently, escaped from death in a miraculous incident.
A three-year-old Australian girl, who was blessed by Pope Benedict XVI when he was in Sydney recently, escaped from death in a miraculous incident.
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Tuesday afternoon Peter Hill rolled his 22-seater bus on top of his daughter Claire in a queue for petrol on the South Coast.
Lodged under the dual rear wheels of the four-tonne vehicle, there was no chance that Claire had survived, but astonishingly, the little girl escaped death with only a few bruises.
The tyre marks were yesterday visible on her tiny abdomen, but she astounded her parents and medical specialists by surviving the ordeal without internal injuries, broken bones or lasting physical damage of any kind.
"I couldn't think anything other than a guardian angel was holding that bus up and keeping the weight off her," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Hill as saying.
"I jumped in the driver's seat and just rolled forward. "And Claire opened the door and hopped out of the car, and the next thing I know, someone's banging on the bus. I went to look and saw Claire lying underneath the two back wheels, pinned to the ground. At that moment I thought: "God, I've killed her."
His wife, Sue Hill, a mother of 11, was inclined to believe in the power of prayer.
"I had put a miraculous medal (of Mother Mary) on her just an hour before," she said.
Sue's family and friends on the South Coast and beyond reached out through church and social networks to draw hundreds more into prayer, she said.
"All my children rang all these other families. My sister rang the Mother Teresa nuns in Sydney," she said.
The Children's Hospital said it was hopeful Claire would make a full recovery.
"Despite experiencing a major trauma, she has no broken bones or serious internal injuries," a spokeswoman said.
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