Do you remember the red Chevrolet Silverado that was caught yesterday in the tornado in Elgin, Texas? The wind blew the truck over, turned it, then put the truck back on the wheels, and the driver hit the gas and drove off. According to Elgin television channel KXAN, the driver left the truck in Elgin, which probably led to any local outlet camping in the woods, causing the driver to return. They found him, of course: 16-year-old Riley Leon.
In an interview with KVUE station, Leon said he left a job interview in Elgin, missed two U-turns, then “out of nowhere, the tornado came and hit me.”
Leon told the TV reporter that the tornado had gripped him even before what we saw in the video. “It was a grave, and it took me there, and took me out and put me on the road, and that’s where I spin the truck.” Twister turned him around “like a carnival game, it was fast.”
Omg … just go through my video. This is a story about a red truck and a tornado …. I CANNOT believe they went that way. #txwx #Tornado pic.twitter.com/8h0nD88xFv
– Brian Emfinger (@brianemfinger)
March 22, 2022
He also had no plans to leave; he just tried to get away from the worst of the wind, then hung on long enough to get help from an Elgin police officer and emergency medical staff. The officer said Leon had “a scar or a few cuts to his left arm” that connected the EMTs. “I asked if he was OK, and he shook his head and did not really answer me.”
But hey, he’s a teenager who accidentally lands in a tornado (unlike the storm chasers who do it cautiously). We would not be shocked if he were still under the covers in his room in Manor, Texas, laying a thousand-meter star on the wall, instead of trying to give interviews about the experience.
Based on other stories of destruction in the area, caused by winds that reached up to 130 miles per hour, Leon has great luck. The truck was worse, he said, with “a lot of scratches, a lot of teeth, but hopefully I will work hard to fix it or buy a new one.” Hope he got the job done in Elgin.
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