‘He didn’t think about it, he ran’: Police reveal extraordinary actions of good Samaritan who saved life of 4yo girl

When stuntman Casey Wright saw an out-of-control car hurtling towards a four-year-old girl, he made an extraordinary decision that left him with serious injuries but likely saved her life.

On a quiet Wednesday in late August, Casey Wright planned to wander down to Southport Library near his home, as he often did, to do some paperwork.

That’s all he remembers from that day.

Then, there are blurred memories of an emergency room, nurses bustling around him, and his father waiting in a corridor as he was wheeled towards his room.

He didn’t know how he’d ended up in hospital.

His scalp, torn away, was temporarily sutured into place, his right knee and forearm were punctured, and he was told his back was badly broken.

Post-traumatic amnesia – partly caused by concussion from his head injury – robbed the professional stunt performer of retaining much of the information being repeated to him during those first few days in Gold Coast University Hospital.

That he had gone to the library, and courageously run in front of an out-of-control car to save a four-year-old girl in its path and been seriously injured.

Stuntman Casey Wright was seriously injured while heroically putting his own body on the line to save a four year old girl from being hit by a car. Picture: David Kelly

“Mate, you’re a damn hero,” Sergeant Beau McNamara explains when he visits Wright in hospital.

He was the shift supervisor in Southport on August 30 and had been called to the confronting scene.

“There’s no other way to describe it. You went to the aid to save a child and that’s why you’re here now – you’re a hero.”

“Oh, thank you,” Wright, 39, replies, struggling to reconcile the officer’s praise.

He might never know why, perhaps a reflex from his many years of stunt training – Wright has trained around the world and performed in action blockbusters such as Thor: Ragnarok and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – but something that day made him run towards the young girl and in front of the car that was hurtling over a kerb and down a
grassy slope towards her, sparing her from what paramedics described as likely “catastrophic” injury.

Casey Wright. Picture: David Kelly

It was a selfless act he might not remember, but one that a family, able to bring their little girl home safely to her bed that night, will never forget.

The family, who requested not to be identified publicly, didn’t meet Wright at the time, caught in the panic of the accident, but later reached out to offer their gratitude, and he hopes to meet them soon.

“In stunts, if someone comes off the trampoline wrong, the first thing we do is dive
in to save them – we spot.

So, that’s apparently what my body did,” Wright says, after finally being discharged from hospital three weeks later.

“The police were surprised neither of us were dead, which was a bit rough to hear the first time. But all things considered, the little girl went home that night from the hospital, and I can walk and talk and move everything. I woke up in hospital and whatever happened, happened. If she’s all good, then I take it as a win.”

Casey Wright being attended to by paramedics at Southport Library. Picture: Charlton Hart

When McNamara arrived at the scene, Wright was lying on the footpath being helped by paramedics and a witness who had rushed to his aid, while the girl, who was with family, was loaded into another ambulance and taken to hospital.

The 87-year-old driver and his passenger, 84, suffered minor injuries and shock, and both were taken to Robina Hospital.

The library is in the centre of Southport’s business district and was busy in the early afternoon on August 30.

The sound of the crash reverberated around the buildings and the carpark was quickly a mass of people – witnesses, media, and paramedics – rushing to the damaged car, the elderly couple inside, and the two injured pedestrians, both with head injuries.

The call had come through to emergency services as a car into a building, multiple injured, including a child.

“You think the worst,” says Queensland Ambulance Service senior operations supervisor Mitch Ware.

“It was quite a chaotic and confronting scene. Our first concern was with the child.

“Casey was on the ground, he had blood from his head, and he had some pretty significant injuries,” he says of Wright, who they were telling to remain still.

“He did have some retrograde amnesia, so he wasn’t able to recall the events, but he was still jovial and trying to make people laugh.”

Queensland Ambulance Service senior operations supervisor Mitch Ware at the accident scene on the day. Picture: Charlton Hart

Security cameras fixed to the outside of the library captured the moment the reversing hatchback suddenly lost control and hurtled through the carpark, over the kerb and on to a grassy area, towards where the child was standing safely with family, near the building and far from any danger.

Wright, walking by the carpark, does a double take, glancing from the car to the girl and in a snap moment sets off into a sprint.

“Casey was a significant distance away from the vehicle, so he wasn’t in a position where his safety was at risk at all,” recalls McNamara, who pulled up the vision shortly after arriving at the scene.

“It shows his character. He didn’t think about it. He ran. All he was looking at was trying to get to that child.

“Within centimetres of the child, he has been struck with the full force of the car. You can see right at the last millisecond; he knows what is happening.”

Casey Wright. Picture: David Kelly

Just as he reached her, Wright, as if trying to stop the car with his body, was thrown several metres in the air and on to the concrete wall behind him, hitting his head and back squarely against it, before falling on to the footpath. The car, which ripped through the awning of the walkway’s shade sail, was slowed enough by the impact to save pushing them further against the wall.

The young girl had also been struck and was knocked to the ground next to Wright, injuring her head. She had tried to run away after he called out to her, which McNamara says, “caused her to go with the momentum of the car, which is essentially what has assisted in her not being seriously injured”.

“I imagine it would have been catastrophic (if Wright didn’t act),” Ware agrees. “It all happened so quickly. Where they were, you don’t think for a minute you’re at risk of being run over. It gave her the ability to react to the oncoming vehicle, which she probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise.”

The scene of the accident. Picture: Charlton Hart

Visiting him in hospital in the following days, McNamara told Wright he had recommended him for a bravery commendation – the first time he’d done so for a civilian – which is now working its way through QPS procedures.

“I can’t explain enough how much he put himself into a perilous position,” McNamara says. “He put his life on the line trying to protect the child and, from what you can see from his injuries, came very close to being a serious fatality.

“Personally, police officers, we see the worst in humanity at times. All officers involved were very humbled to see that kind of act. It is very rare to see someone run into that perilous situation to save another person, and a person he didn’t even know.”

There have been no charges laid, and investigations are ongoing to identify the cause of the crash, with the Forensic Crash Unit working to provide closure to everyone involved.

Police have decided not to release the footage, which is distressing, out of respect for the young girl and her family and to prevent any vicarious trauma.

“I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation for Casey’s noble intent to try and save our daughter,” the child’s mother tells Qweekend, her daughter treated in hospital and later discharged.

“We are very thankful for his quick thinking and compassion. Our family will forever cherish his selfless act. Despite the shock and fear that followed the accident I am overwhelmingly grateful that my daughter is alive and well with minor injuries.”

Casey Wright in hospital after the accident.

Wright struggles to accept being called a hero.

But he is glad to know the young girl is healthy and appreciates police and paramedics visiting him in hospital to shake his hand and wish him well.

“It’s so weird because I’m reading about (the crash) or hear it on the radio and there is no connection. This person just has the same name as me,” Wright says.

“Coming to the next morning, I was still concussed and foggy and asking a lot of the same questions. … then in a hospital bed and being wheeled back into the room and going ‘that looks like my dad’.

“The first few days in hospital I was trying to will my brain to remember it. I’d remember
a noise or a sensation and then go, oh I don’t
like this. Let’s move on … let’s have a laugh because you don’t want people being miserable in hospital.”

Wright’s parents and brother had travelled from Hervey Bay the day after the accident.

Fellow stunt performer Briahne Holland, having been phoned by hospital staff as Wright was brought in – that dreaded call that sends a shiver of panic into the pit of your stomach – had immediately packed a bag and raced to emergency.

Casey Wright required 34 staples to reattach his scalp.

It was four days before Wright was taken to surgery, his partially degloved scalp remedied with 34 staples by a plastic surgeon, while doctors from orthopaedics and neurology worked on his spine and other wounds. Scans eventually revealed three spinal fractures – injuries that will likely keep him out of active stunt work for more than a year.

As news spread of the accident, friends and stunt performers, not surprised that Wright would put someone before himself, began visiting so often over the next three weeks that nurses would simply instruct new visitors to “follow the laughter”.

Some brought Superman toys in a cheeky toast to his heroism and others dutifully vandalised the whiteboard in his room to the delight of the ward staff.

“Everyone who came into hospital left laughing and that’s a big thing for me,” Wright says. “You’ve got to be positive. The ward was like an eight-year-old’s birthday party – just laughs and candy and Superman toys.”

Holland set up a GoFundMe account to help Wright with his ongoing medical expenses and loss of income, and the stunt community hosted a charity soccer match on the Gold Coast, which they plan to replicate in other states.

“We all look out for each other,” Wright says.

“This is a big thing coming from stunts – if something goes wrong, we dive in. I’ve had friends where I’ve come off something wrong 20ft (6m) in the air and they’ve stood under to catch me, and so it’s just part and parcel of what my industry is.”

X-ray of Casey Wright’s spinal fractures.

Growing up on the Sunshine Coast, Wright dreamt of being a professional wrestler, idolising Hulk Hogan and The Undertaker, until one day his mother suggested, “what about stunt work?”

He trained at Stunt Academy on the Gold Coast, building his skill set and connections, before training in the US and around the world with performers from The Fast and the Furious, The Matrix and Casino Royale.

He worked on several locally filmed blockbusters including the recent George Clooney and Julia Roberts comedy, Ticket to Paradise, and had just signed the biggest role of his career on major production Minecraft, which is set to film soon in New Zealand.

While his injuries will impact his work, paramedics agreed his stunt training might have saved his life.

“He definitely knew how to take an impact,” Ware says. “If he wasn’t that trained professional then his injuries could have been catastrophic.”

At this, Holland, who watched the footage with police, jests to Wright with a smile, “you went for a front break fall, should’ve gone for a side break fall, but apart from that, no notes”.

Casey Wright at a stunt clinic in LA last year, pre accident.

New scans in October revealed additional spinal fractures, tearing in his punctured right knee, and foreign material inside surgical sites, which might require more surgery to remove.

He wears a back brace full time and will start light rehabilitation in six months before hopefully returning to stunt training this time next year, and eventually to active work.

It will be a long recovery, but true to himself, he is staying positive.

“I’ll be making the best of the situation,” Wright says, knowing he wouldn’t change a thing. “I don’t regret what I did for a second. At no point have I thought ‘I wish I didn’t do that’.

“If it happened again, I’d hope that my body would do the same thing – just maybe quicker.”

His memory of the event might return at some point, and he will process that if it does, but if you ask him, there’s only one thing worth remembering from that ordinary day he went to the library.

“Life is short,” he says.

“I’ve always been a big believer in that but now it’s even more so, go and enjoy the time when you can.”

gofundme.com/f/support-hero-on-his-path-to-recovery