The Uncle of the Year Award goes to Tyler Blake Kimbrall.
Kimbrall, a 24-year-old from Alabama, was driving behind his sister, Destiny Kay Hollis, on the night of August 4. Though he flashed his headlights repeatedly to warn her, Hollis took a wrong turn onto a winding road. By the time Kimbrall took that same turn, Hollis’s car was nowhere to be seen.
The car had fallen 100 feet down into an embankment and flipped over—with Kimbrall’s sister and 11-month-old niece, Breleigh, still inside.
“At first I didn’t see Destiny, I didn’t hear anything,” Kimbrall told ABC News. “But then I heard her frantically screaming for Breleigh.”
Kimbrall took charge. He told his sister to join their grandmother in his car and call 911 while he went down the embankment to find Breleigh. He couldn’t hear her, nor could he see her, so he started filming a video on his phone and used the light emitted by the screen to search for his niece.
“She’s alive,” Kimbrall can be heard saying in the video. “I got you, sweetie. Uncle Blake is here! I love you so much. Lord Jesus, watch over her.”
Kimbrall said that hearing Breleigh cry was the most precious sound he’s ever heard. Ambulances and emergency personnel arrived soon after Kimbrall retrieved his niece. Miraculously, both Destiny and Breleigh left the accident unharmed.
“This has definitely changed my life and made me much closer to my niece,” he told ABC News. “I love her as if she was my own.”
Watch the heroic rescue here.