Video: Former Sportscaster Survives Being Tossed From RV On Freeway

NEWHALL, CA —A man was ejected from an RV that struck a center divider on the Antelope Valley (14) Freeway in Newhall Monday, landing in the roadway and, somehow, living to tell about it. The whole ordeal was captured on a dashboard camera.

The injured man, identified as Cordell Patrick, a former ESPN sportscaster, described the ordeal to KTLA, saying, “I had just unbuckled my seat belt. It was only unbuckled for five seconds,” Patrick recalled. “I noticed my wife had dozed off, so instead of going straight, we were headed toward the median. I tried grabbing the steering wheel, but before I could grab it we already had impact...“All I’m thinking about is that I’m going to get hit by a car,” he said. “I’m on one of the busiest freeways in L.A. County so what was going through my mind was, ‘I’ll be dead shortly.’”

But a witness quickly came to his aid.

Alf Smithey, told reporters he saw the RV swerve across the southbound Antelope Valley (14) Freeway and strike the center divider near Los Pinetos Road around 11:30 a.m. Monday.

Click here to see dashcam video of the unlikely survival story on KTLA.

Dashcam video taken by a motorist on the southbound side of the freeway shows a man apparently falling from the RV, landing across the freeway divider near the northbound carpool lane.

Smithey, initially unaware that anyone had fallen from the vehicle, said he stopped and ran to the RV to see if anyone was injured.

He told NBC4 he talked to the woman behind the wheel, who told him her husband was missing.

"She kept saying, `My husband is not here. My husband is not here,"' Smithey told the station. "Then she kept looking out the window behind her."

Smithey said the woman had apparently fallen asleep behind the wheel, and the impact with the center divider threw her husband across the vehicle and through a window, sending him onto the opposite side of the freeway.

Smithey said he ran to help the man, and found him conscious and alert.

"He had a big old gash on his forehead," he told Channel 4. "I think it was from hitting the window. He was the passenger. He flew across her and hit the window. I think that's what saved his life because if the window was open, he could have landed into oncoming traffic."

City News Service, Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.