Father hires helicopter to scour Australian bush for missing son

A teenage boy trapped in the wreckage of a car crash in the Australian bush was saved by his father who hired a helicopter to go looking for him.

Samuel Lethbridge, 17, was recovering in hospital today with multiple injuries after his father Tony found him after he had been missing for more than 30 hours.

The teenager’s smashed vehicle was eventually spotted 60 feet off the Pacific Highway near Crangan Bay, Newcastle, within ten minutes of the chopper taking off.

Mr Lethbridge suspected his son had been in a road accident after he failed to return home on Sunday night.

There had been a similar accident on the same stretch of road some years earlier and Mr Lethbridge suspected Samuel had crashed in the same area.

“Everybody was saying he’s probably run away and all that kind of stuff. That’s just not Samuel,” he told Australia’s Seven News.

“We did have an accident here about five years ago – exactly the same thing – and unfortunately that bloke passed away because nobody found him within five days,” he recalled.

“I wasn’t going to let that happen,” he added.

Determined to find his son, the anxious father hired a helicopter and asked his brother Michael to go up with the pilot.

They had only been airborne for ten minutes when they saw the remains of Samuel’s Hyundai lying down a bank.

“We were so lucky because for those first 10 minutes it was really thick, wooded land and then Sam’s car is so white so it just stood out,” Michael told local media.

The bush was so dense that the pilot was unable to land so he dropped off Sam’s uncle about 150 yards away from the site of the crash, while the chopper remained overhead to identify the car’s location.

Michael feared the worst as he approached the wreckage.

“I really didn’t want to go, I was scared of what I might find,” he admitted.

Then he saw Sam’s head begin to move.

“I went from being terrified to ecstatic in a couple of seconds,” he recalled. He found Sam pinned under the dashboard with multiple fractures, but fully conscious.

Emergency workers had to peel the roof back and cut the seats out to free him. Ambulance superintendent Jess Atkins said the young man was completely trapped in the car from the waist down.

“It was a very extensive rescue, very difficult extrication of the patient (and) very lucky the young man is still alive.”

Sam’s sister Megan, who had first reported her brother missing, posted a message on Facebook: “Counting my lucky stars tonight that

(Sam) is doing well so far.”

This morning he underwent surgery at Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital where he remained in a serious condition.