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Bonilla said he pulled his T-shirt over his head as the wind blew glass and debris through the busted windows.
“I could taste antifreeze …. I start praying. The wind blew for maybe 15, 20 seconds but it was the longest 15, 20 seconds of my life,” he said.
Bonilla said he heard screaming from the pickup.
He found Bridges “banged up pretty bad,” hanging by a seat belt out the jammed open door. The pickup’s passenger, Wyatt Mindemann, suffered a broken ankle and a lacerated leg and was unable to help.
Bonilla said he went back to check on O’Neal but realize O’Neal was already gone. He said he found his cellphone and called 911.
Bonilla said he then ripped a piece of glass from the pickup’s windshield and use it to cut Bridges’ seat belt.
Bridges fell to the ground and said, “I’m OK. I’m fine. Just get help,” Bonilla recalled.
Bridges and Mindemann worked in Oklahoma’s oil fields for an equipment company. They were headed for Yukon, where Mindemann has a home and where Bridges stayed in an apartment during the week.
From his Oklahoma City hospital room, Mindemann, 29, said Thursday the pickup was tossed almost 300 yards after getting hit by the falling telephone pole.
“I just kind of remember getting tossed around,” he said. “If I hadn’t had my seat belt on, I probably would have been gone. It was sucking me out the window, that’s for sure. It pretty much ripped everything off of me but my pants and my shirt. It sucked my wedding ring off and my boots and my knife out of my pocket.”
Mindemann said he hurt his ankle and leg because his feet were sticking out a knocked out window as the pickup rolled. “I was fighting like hell to stay in,” Mindemann said.
Bridges, Mindemann and others in their company helped in Moore after an EF5 tornado struck there May 20, cooking hamburgers and hot dogs for victims. “That was all his idea,” Mindemann said of his boss and friend. “He was all about helping people, man.”
Bridges wrote on Facebook, “Least we can do. It’s so upsetting. I cried couple times. It’s worst seeing them kids with nothing.”
Driving up on the accident scene were David and Carrie Riblet of El Reno.
“I really don’t think he knew where he was,” Carrie Riblet, 45, said of Bridges. “He kept rolling over, getting up on his knees, trying to get up. … And David kept saying, ‘No, you need to lay down. You’re hurt.'”
Carrie Riblet said she grabbed Bridges’ hand after paramedics and her husband put him on a stretcher.
“The paramedic … looked at the other paramedic and said, ‘I can’t find a pulse.’ And I looked down at him, his eyes were fixed. Once I let go of his hand, it just dropped,” she recalled Thursday. “I can’t get the image out of my head. … He was dead and there was nothing that we could do.”
She said she believes God put her and husband there to help comfort Bridges in those minutes. “God has a plan,” she said. “I think God helps us to serve Him.”
