It’s not every day that the scariest moment of your life gets caught on camera. However, that’s exactly what happened to Angelique Turner, who found herself caught in her car during a wild storm that hit Ohio on Aug. 11, 2026. Turner was on her way to work when her life flashed before her eyes.
The incident was captured by an Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) traffic camera, according to WKYC Channel 3. The outlet shared clips of the footage with viewers, focusing in on the exact spot on I-71 where Turner had been driving in Columbus when particularly strong winds blew in, tossing her car into the air like it was a child’s toy.
Her story immediately went viral, with the footage being covered by outlets like CBS News Station. 10 WBNS, which said the storm created “nearly white-out conditions” for anyone who found themselves on the road. According to the outlet, the day was a challenging one for locals as multiple storms hit the region, with 80-100 mph winds and severe flooding.
Now, Turner is opening up about her experience, sharing how she thought she was going to die during the storm. The grateful mother is also crediting the strangers who jumped to her aid with saving her life, helping her to get back to her family, who she was talking to just moments before her car went airborne.
Turner Was Caught on the Road in a Severe Thunderstorm
Turner told WKYC Channel 3 that all she could think about in the moments before her car was picked up was the fact that she wanted to get home to her daughter and her partner, Sherrecka Denby, with whom she had been on the phone at the time.
Denby sat next to her during the interview with the outlet and confirmed that the weather had been getting progressively worse and that Turner had said she would pull over to wait for the weather to clear. “And then all of the sudden it was like ‘boom, boom, boom,'” her Denby recalled. “The last thing I heard before her phone hung up, because it hung up right off s, he started screaming, ‘baby help me,’ was her OnStar come on.”
Everything Went Gray Before She Went Airborne
The young mother says a lot of what happened during the flip itself was a blur, and she recalled she felt a big “whoosh” before her car began bouncing along a stretch of I-71. When the vehicle finally came to a complete stop, Turner said she was hanging upside-down, held in place only by her seatbelt.
She recalled how the terror of these moments keeps playing over and over in her mind, even though she wishes they wouldn’t. Still, she shares that there is a bright spot from the entire ordeal.
Strangers Jumped Into Action to Help Turner
With the storm still raging, Turner’s next memories are of the helpers who came rushing up to her car. First, she says a man in a white truck came running over to her. She told the reporter how she wished she could thank him.
“I want to thank him so much,” she said before sending a message directly to the good Samaritan. “You are heaven-sent, definitely an angel.”
The moment sounds like it was terrifying for both Turner and Denby, who said that there were about 10 minutes between phone calls when she didn’t know whether her partner was dead or alive. Hopefully Turner’s message of gratitude gets to the man in the white truck, so he can learn just how much his moment of heroic kindness helped during such a difficult time.