16-year-old pushes stranded double amputee home to safety minutes before tornado bears down on St. Louis
A double amputee in St. Louis found himself in a precarious situation this past week. He was stuck outside as tornado alarms started blaring around the city, and just when it seemed like there would be nobody coming to his aid, one teenager decided he would stop and help.
According to KMOV, Gregory Beck was leaving Schnucks on St. Charles Rock Road in St. John when the sirens started going off. Beck, who had lost both his legs over the last year and had been declared legally blind as a consequence of his diabetes, can't drive, so he pushes himself up and down a hill to his home.
He said that, as he desperately tried to cross the road and make his way home, drivers were yelling and honking at him. After he somehow made it to a nearby gas station, a car pulled up next to him.
"This lady and her son were hollering at me like 'Are you okay?" Beck recollected. "Very lovely lady driving and her son. Just the greatest people and very concerned about other people, which America needs to start doing more of."
It's here that 16-year-old Seth Robert Phillips jumped out without hesitation to lend a helping hand. As his mother Amber Gillylen recorded the video, tornado alarms still sounding off in the background, the teen, without any regard for his safety, pushed Beck up a hill for about a block and a half.
Beck revealed that, without Phillips' help, it would have taken him up to 25 minutes to get to the top of the hill and that he would have to stop as many as 10 times to rest along the way.
In a Facebook post which has since gone viral, Gillylen said Beck thanked her and her son profusely because he knew he would have been stuck in a "terrible storm" without their help and that he had gotten home "dry and safe."
Gushing with pride for her son, Gillylen said the 16-year-old decided to intervene "without a second thought" despite having sore arms because of the immunization shots he had taken the previous day. She also revealed that her grandfather, like Beck, was a double amputee, and that she had raised her children to help if they can.
She said even after committing the selfless act, Seth complained that people could do more, writing that his exact words were, "Mom, I hate that we live in a world where people would rather fly by and honk at a disabled person than to lend a hand."
Moved by Beck's plight, Gillylen set up a GoFundMe page with the aim of raising money that would go towards buying him an electric wheelchair. The page has raised $1,845 of a possible $4,000 goal at the time of writing.