‘Pretty damn lucky’: Aldergrove woman survives horrific-looking crash involving semi

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – She thought she was going to be killed. An Aldergrove woman is sharing her unbelievable story of surviving a crash that saw the trailer of a semi end up centimetres from her face as it pinned her body.

“I didn’t realize it looked as bad as it did until after,” Sarah Champoux tells NEWS 1130. “Everything happened so quickly yet you remember every second of it.”

Champoux, who transports horses for a living, was hauling five horses to the Lower Mainland from Calgary on Monday along the Trans-Canada Highway. By 2 p.m. she was driving through Sicamous, just north of Kelowna, going over 50 km/hr when a semi-truck pulled out of a truck stop and onto the highway, directly into her path.

“I knew I was gonna go under the trailer, I was thinking at the time that I was going to be killed,” she recalls. “Maybe not necessarily thinking I was going to be decapitated but I figured I was going to get hit.”

In a split-second decision, Champoux braced for impact by ducking her upper body into the passenger side of her pick-up truck, very possibly saving her life. The crash saw her vehicle T-bone the middle of the semi’s trailer with the front of her vehicle disappearing under it, leaving it crushed and the driver’s side decimated.

“His trailer basically came to rest up against my neck and my chest inside the truck, so I was pinned inside for a few minutes,” Champoux says. “I saw some smoke coming out of the truck , I got panicked thinking that the truck was going to catch on fire and pushing back into my feet I managed to get enough room to slide out and go out the passenger side.”

Champoux walked away from the collision with just an aching back and body, surprising even police officers called to the scene.

“Police had arrived and they were like, ‘Is the driver still inside?’ and they said, ‘No, no she’s over there,'” says Champoux. “And they’re like, ‘What? She’s out of the truck? This is crazy, where is she?'”

The crash closed the highway for a couple of hours as it got cleared and police investigated. Champoux was taken to Salmon Arm Hospital to get checked out. The five horses in the trailer she was towing were left frightened but also survived.

“When I got home and I saw my daughter, I burst into tears cause you sort of get emotional, right? Like you realize, ‘Wow, I’m so lucky to be here,'” Champoux adds. “There is nothing to the driver’s side, like, there is no driver’s side. I don’t even know how I managed to get out – it’s completely annihilated. Considering the scheme of it, I feel pretty damn lucky. I had a few little cuts and bruises and I’m walking and have no broken bones.”

Champoux believes the other driver was issued a ticket. NEWS 1130 has reached out to the RCMP for more information.