Panthers McCaffrey helps save life of injured 72-year-old hiker
CASTLE ROCK, CO — Carolina Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey helped rescue a 72-year-old man who fell 20 feet onto a rock while hiking along a Colorado trail Saturday.
“We were going to go to lunch,” McCaffrey said on the Panthers’ website. “And then just randomly we were like, ‘Let’s go hike the rock.’”
McCaffrey, two of his brothers and two friends were at Castle Rock hiking when they saw Eli Smoker fall. Smoker’s 13-year-old grandson also was on the hike and witnessed the ordeal.
“It felt like he was in the air for 10 seconds,” Christian McCaffrey said. “I had never seen anything quite like that in my life as far as the trauma and the sound. We were in shock.”
They called 911 for help. Smoker was seriously injured and his breathing stopped. They started performing chest compressions on the man.
Paramedics arrived about 11 minutes.
Smoker had a broken femur, a broken pelvis, internal bleeding, bleeding on the brain, nine fractured ribs and a broken neck.
Smoker was in critical but stable condition Tuesday.
A day after the accident, McCaffrey visited Smoker in the hospital.
“They introduced themselves and I still hadn’t pieced it together,” Smoker said. “I can’t say I’d recognize Christian without his football gear on. Around here, Valor Christian is a popular high school, and I knew that Ed McCaffrey had just taken over as head coach there. We were talking and they had mentioned that they went to Valor, and we were looking there because our son loves football as well.”
Leave a Reply