LEBANON COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) — Robin Stutzman was on her way to a swim meet with two of her children when she found herself face to face with an F3 tornado in Campbelltown. Seconds after she left home, her life flashed before her eyes.
“I turned the corner and I was only two-houses in on Carriage when I saw a sheet of black. A sheet of black coming across the road. It was so prevalent that I couldn’t see the houses. I couldn’t see the street. I couldn’t see anything in front of me,” she explains.
Fearing for their lives, Robin screamed for her kids to get down on the ground as she watched her neighborhood get wiped out by the winds. The tornado ultimately left a path of destruction more than seven miles long.
After more than 10-minutes of terror, Robin got out of her car only to find her daughter’s car seat empty. The storm had subsided, but Robin’s panic intensified.
“When I looked in the back seat, my daughter was not there at all and all the windows were broken out of the car like where she sat. I thought she was sucked out of the car and I just screamed at the top of my lungs. Oh my word, Bethany! I don’t even want to go back there, it was such a horrible feeling. I just thought she was gone. I thought she was sucked out of the car, it was so bad,” she explains.
Finally, a sign of life, coming from her son. Robin’s 13-year-old son had pulled his 6-year-old sister to safety and laid his body on top of her.
“I think he saved her life,” she says.