Md. Woman Recovering After Her Leg Is Impaled By Tree

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) -- A Maryland woman is recovering at Shock Trauma after a tree slammed into the car she was riding in during Wednesday's wind storm.

Briana Clark was riding in her boyfriend's car in Annapolis on Wednesday, when the intense wind-storm caused a branch to snap off a tree above their moving car.

"The tree branch fell through the windshield," she says.

Speaking from her hospital bed at Shock Trauma, 20-year-old Briana describes the horrifying moment, when the tree branch, two inches in diameter, came through the windshield and pierced her leg.

"It went through my leg. It was very sudden and I didn't see it coming at all."

"I just remember the glass shattering. The initial impact, I didn't feel I guess because the adrenaline was rushing and I was in shock," she says.

Briana endured more than an hour of pain and anxiety as first responders worked carefully to cut each end of the branch and ease her out of the car with a section still impaling her thigh just above the knee.

"What was going through my head was I just hoped my leg would be ok. I just hoped I wouldn't have to get a fake leg, and if I was going to lose too much blood. My next thought was to try to get help."

Surgeons at Shock Trauma removed the branch from her leg. They say Briana is lucky because it just missed one of the major arteries in her leg, which would have been fatal.
Instead, Briana should make a full recovery.

Rescuers from Anne Arundel county and the City of Annapolis are credited with doing the right thing on the scene to save her leg.