A seven-year-old girl has made an extraordinary recovery after being picked up and hurled into a tree by a 165mph twister.
Miriam Rios was outside her family's mobile home in Cedar Valley, Texas, when the hellish tornado swept her up and tossed her hundreds of yards through the air.
According to a report by the New York Post, the twister left a 13-mile path of destruction and flattened the Rios' home. But miraculously, Miriam survived and was found unconscious and dangling upside down from a cedar tree.
After being rushed to a nearby hospital, the seven-year-old came around. She is now making a good recovery from her injuries and celebrating her seventh birthday from her hospital bed.
Miriam was not the only member of her family to be caught in the twister. Her father, Joel Rios, mother Vanessa, and one-year-old brother Ezra were all tossed in different directions by the storm. Incredibly, the whole family survived the tornado, which injured a total of 23 people on its rampage across the state.
Vanessa's sister, Naomi Benavides, told KFVS that the Rios family initially tried to drive away from the storm, but turned back when it began hailing. "[Vanessa] was picking up…holding onto her babies as much as she could," she described, adding: "The little girl — she had to hold onto her by her hair. They ended up getting lifted up from the trailer and just thrown into the trees."
Benavides went on to report that, tragically, Vanessa had miscarried as a result of her injuries. However, she added to the New York Post that "everyone is doing OK!"
Meanwhile, rodeo worker Blake Miller described the shocking moment he found the Rios family trapped in fallen trees to local TV station KWTX.
He recalled how Miriam had a gash on her head, while her baby brother Ezra was stuck in tree limbs.
"I mean, I had to dig, probably three feet into these trees and limbs that were everywhere," Miller said. "The little baby was underneath all of it. Underneath the whole pile." Incredibly, Ezra was unharmed apart from cuts and bruises.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family rebuild after the tornado devastated their home. At the time of writing, over $84,000 has been raised to get the Rios back on their feet.
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