BRAVE COWBOY JAMIE MANNING :MY AMAZING TALE OF SURVIVAL

Trapped in a burning car, the father-of-three thought he’d never see his wife and kids again

- Astha Gupta.

Time was ticking on and Karen Manning was feeling uneasy. Her husband Jamie, a stock salesman, still wasn’t home yet.

Unable to contact him to find out where he was, Karen left her three children at the family’s farmhouse in Dubbo, NSW, and went out looking for him.

As she approached a bend, a mere 3km from their home, Karen faced a horrifying sight – the flashing blue lights of police cars and her husband’s ute crushed against the trunk of a tree, engulfed in flames.

“I saw the fire from Jamie’s ute light up the night sky and I thought he was gone,” Karen tells Woman’s Day.

She broke down sobbing, believing her husband to still be trapped inside the inferno – something no one could possibly survive. Incredibly, Jamie cheated death and had already been pulled out from the wreckage and was in an ambulance, being rushed to the hospital.

Making the mercy dash to reach him, Karen learned the devastating details of what had happened. When an oncoming truck had caused Jamie to swerve, he’d left the road and ploughed into a tree. The impact had shunted the engine onto his lap, the seatbelt jammed around his waist and his legs were pinned under the dashboard of the ute, which had quickly caught on fire.