An elderly woman was injured after a turtle struck the windshield of the car in which she was traveling, in Florida.
According to the newspaper report Trade, the 71-year-old woman was traveling as a copilot when the animal landed on the windshield, partially breaking it, and being embedded in it.
After the impact, the driver of the vehicle, the daughter of the injured woman, asked the other drivers for help, who stopped their vehicles to help her.
The daughter asked them to look at what had hit her vehicle, as she was desperately trying to stop the bleeding from her mother’s face, which had been hit by the glass that was shot out with force after the collision.
One of the drivers told him that it was a turtle that had hit her and that the animal was still there, embedded in her car.
“A turtle? A real turtle ?! ”, the woman exclaimed in disbelief, according to the local newspaper. Daytona Beach New-Journal.
The reptile survived the impact, resulting in only a few blows to the shell, for which it was released into a wooded area close to where the incident occurred.
For her part, the woman suffered a deep cut on her head, for which she had to be taken to hospital, although it was not a serious injury.
Officer André Fleming, a spokesman for the Port Orange police, indicated that the victim suffered a two-centimeter cut between the eye and the eyebrow, which was sutured at Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach.
The woman also told the local newspaper that her mother had had “the worst luck in the world”, for going precisely to the place where the animal struck.
However, the Florida highway police indicated that in 2016 another similar incident had already been registered, which was recorded on video and that at the time went viral on social networks.
There are two theories for both accidents, as experts believe that the turtles could well have been prey for hunting birds that dropped them from above to break their shells and eat them.
It is also speculated that they could have been on the side of the road and were hit by a car, which launched them like projectiles.