Derrick Van Orden
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Republican Congressman Helped Save A Child From A Car Crash

RNN Staff

Congressman Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) became an unexpected first responder on Saturday when he rushed to help a child critically injured in a car crash along Interstate 35 near Osceola, Iowa.

Van Orden, a retired Navy SEAL, recalled seeing a Dodge Grand minivan lose control and slam off the road at nearly 70 miles per hour. “I’m watching a Dodge Grand minivan disintegrate,” he said, adding that the sight made him believe someone had just lost their life.

He immediately pulled his truck onto the grass divider and ran toward the wreckage. Inside, he found an 11-year-old boy with severe injuries. “His calf was completely ripped apart, I could see his tibia and fibula. He had an arterial bleed in his wrist,” Van Orden described.

With no medical kit at hand, Van Orden improvised, running back to his truck to grab socks he used as makeshift tourniquets. Other passersby quickly joined in, including a farmer who broke off a windshield wiper to help secure a bandage and a medic who fashioned another tourniquet out of metal. Together, the group kept the child alive until paramedics arrived.

“It took about 10 to 15 minutes for first responders to get there. He would’ve bled to death. He would’ve been gone,” Van Orden said. He later visited the boy at a hospital in Des Moines to check on his recovery.

Reflecting on the rescue, the congressman said the moment demonstrated the best of America. “We’re in the middle of somewhere, and this happens, and people just start showing up. They start asking, ‘Hey, can we do this? Can we do that?’ It’s amazing.”

Van Orden also shared the experience on X, noting that the accident happened on the second anniversary of his daughter’s passing. “God works in mysterious ways,” he wrote. “I am so thankful to have been able to make sure this young man’s father did not join the one club you never want to be in.”

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