A 19-year-old University of Texas student is recovering after losing her lower right leg in an accident involving a cement truck.
Around 3 p.m. Tuesday, a cement truck traveling northbound on Guadalupe accidentally ran over Haifa Abubaker while she was walking her bicycle across the street. Witnesses say the driver didn’t know that he had the young woman pinned under his cement truck and dragged her for about 40 feet.
Passersby watched in horror as the scene unfolded but Patrick Clemen, who was working at the same intersection, jumped into action.
“I heard an enormous crash and looked forward, and there was a girl pinned underneath this cement mixer,” said Clemens, a local food technician who also happens to be a Boy Scout Troop Leader, a Desert Storm Veteran, and who was also hit twice on two different occasions while riding his bicycle.
Clemens used his belt as tourniquet to stop Abubaker's bleeding.
Some of the employees working in businesses along the drag who witnessed the graphic nature of the accident were given a couple of days off to cope with the trauma.
“It was truly horrible. I've never seen anything like that before,” said Dennis O’Donnell, an employee at a bar called The Hole in the Wall.
On Wednesday, Abubaker’s lower right leg was amputated. On Thursday she was moved out of ICU at UMC Brackenridge and into a regular room.
Austin police say the cement truck driver will not be charged with anything but the case is considered an accident.
