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Tornado Snatches Baby Girl from Mother's Arms, Deposits Her Safely in Mud
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Everyone knows that the best way to avoid being harmed by a tornado is to hide in your closet where it doesn't see you. That was the course of action that Amy Crago and her 10-month-old daughter, Aleah, took in May 1999 when things took a turn for the windy in Oklahoma City. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of those polite "stops right outside your house" tornadoes -- it was one of the relentless, record-breaking bastards that did this:
NOAA
Those used to be houses.
Crago's closet didn't offer much resistance when the tornado broke through the wall, threw her to the floor, ripped the baby right from her arms, and made away with the helpless bundle. Again, the tornado just swooped by and threw the baby into the air in what must have looked like one of those Rapture scenes from This Is the End, only considerably more terrifying.
As soon as she didn't have an angry vortex of wind screaming at her, Crago got hold of the closest deputy and begged him to find little Aleah for her. She would have done it herself, but she was a little busy being taken to the hospital. And so, Deputy Robert Jolley got the heartbreaking task of searching for a blown-away baby through the brutal devastation, knowing full well that all the laws of nature and probability said he was looking at a complete downer of an afternoon.
But then, as seen on this dashboard camera video from his patrol car, Jolley spotted a little something next to a tree:
KWTV
"Wait, the mom said a 10-month-old; this one's clearly 11. Oh well, back to the tree."
Against all odds, he found Aleah about 100 feet away from the house, covered in mud and resting peacefully like a, you know, baby (one that didn't just get thrown 100 feet by a tornado). Other than a hairline fracture and a cut on her head, she was completely intact -- in fact, she only started crying once Jolley freed her of all the dirt on her face, presumably because it had just gotten warm and cozy.
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