Driver who crawled from crash wreck thanks lifesavers

When Jerry Innesbeer swerved "instinctively" to avoid a deer, his car ploughed into a tree and rolled over and over before coming to a stop in dense woodland almost 200ft (60m) from the road. He suffered horrendous injuries, with a broken leg and ribs, a cracked sternum and punctured lung, but he knew he had to get help.

Somehow, he managed to break his way out of the vehicle and began to crawl towards the sound of traffic.

"My foot had come adrift at this point so I dragged myself from the car back towards the road, down through a couple of very deep ditches," Jerry recalls.

He was crawling through the second ditch – and losing blood – when he was found by the rescue team who he says saved his life.

Jerry had been travelling through the Lincolnshire Wolds on the A157 when the crash happened in February 2022.

His car – now utterly wrecked – ended up hidden from view in the trees.

Fortunately for him, witnesses who saw the crash called 999 and the Lincs and Notts Air Ambulance (LNAA) was scrambled to the scene. Jerry was airlifted to safety.

Fast-forward to today, and Jerry's unwavering determination to recover means he has gone from learning to walk again to running long distances so he can "pay back" the air ambulance for saving his life.

"If they hadn't turned up, we wouldn't be having this conversation now. I wouldn't be here," Jerry says.

He says he was told some deer came out across the road when he was travelling at about 60mph (97km/h).

"In order to put my foot back where it should be, I was given ketamine which helps wipe your memory out. Hence some Swiss cheese memory stuff going on here," he said.

The LNAA crew who attended the scene said they still cannot understand how Jerry managed to get himself to the road in the condition he was in.

They described the incident as a "violent crash" and said the wreckage was invisible from the road.

Upon arrival, the crew found Jerry, who is now 60 and runs a kitchen company, hidden from view and losing blood before he was airlifted to Hull Royal Infirmary.

Dr Mike Hughes, the air ambulance doctor who responded to the crash, says it remains etched in his memory.

"It was during my first few months with Lincs and Notts Air Ambulance, and I remember looking down at the scene and thinking someone's going to be really badly injured down there," he recalls.

Jerry was initially warned he could lose his foot and would have to learn to walk again.

"It just made me more and more determined to do everything I could do before, if not more," he says.

"It was to kind of prove it was worthwhile for the air ambulance to rescue me."

Following multiple surgeries, months of rehabilitation and determination, Jerry recovered and ran the Lincoln 10K in 2024 to raise money for LNAA.

Jerry says he has a new perspective on life after his close brush with death.

"Because you come so close to the end, you do genuinely view life differently," he says.

"It gave me that spirit to think I have a second chance so I'm going to do absolutely everything I can to get the most out of life.

"Part of that for me was paying back into the air ambulance as a massive thank you."

Jerry, who describes himself as a "petrol head", says it is thanks to his wife for advocating to keep his foot that he is back driving the same manual car he crashed in - an Audi R8 Syder.

He first got himself back in a car when he drove an automatic on a three-mile (5km) trip to get some fish and chips about three months after the crash.

He went with a friend to buy his new car while he was still on crutches, with his friend test-driving it for him.

"I think the car salesman thought I was a bit of a nutter really, turning up when I couldn't physically get in the car to drive it," he said.

From his life being on the line, to now just dealing with numbness in his hands and the occasional bit of pain in his leg from metalwork, Jerry describes himself as "very lucky".

He has raised nearly £3,500 and says he plans to run the Lincoln 10K again this year in aid of the air ambulance.

"You never know when you might need them," he says.

"In a split second everything in my life changed and thank God they were there to come and help and rescue me."

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