Three Windsor men are rebounding from a near death experience on the I-75 in Detroit, luckily, no one was seriously hurt.
John Laporte was driving his 2017 Silverado pick-up with his friends Paul Boots and Paul's brother Phil on Thursday at around 3pm. They were returning to Windsor from a trip to northern Michigan.
The group was cruising down the I-75 near I-94 when a semi-truck plowed through the concrete divider and literally flew into their vehicle after police say the driver jumped from the fully-loaded rig after losing control on a nearby road.
"It stopped the trucks momentum, the thing was probably full of rock, blows it apart, which slowed it down, and then it hit the back seat about 12-inches from me," says Laporte.
Pinned to a concrete wall on the side of the road, Laporte and his buddies assessed the damage, everyone was hurting, but they managed to get out safely before the truck burst into flames. He tells CTV Windsor's Rich Garton it wasn't until much later that the gravity of the situation hit him.
"It didn't hit me until I was in the hospital, the x-ray tech was friendly, told me me, 'maybe you have a purpose?' That struck me and I started thinking about my family," says Laporte.
Paul Boots says there was more at work than luck that afternoon.
"We had some help for sure, we had everything on our side, the cement barrier, John's driving, the Silverado truck and somebody else, I think, watching over us," says Boots.
He broke his finger, and the driver of the semi-truck broke his leg, but the majority of the injuries were relegated to bruises and cuts.
Something Laporte tells CTV Windsor can only be described as a miracle.
"If you look at the pictures and say nobody lost their life in this, that is miraculous, and if you believe in miracles, I think we just had one," says Laporte.
The driver of the semi was issued a ticket for $150 dollars for failure to maintain control of a vehicle.
— with files from CTV Windsor's Rich Garton.