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Was Mysterious Priest at Car Wreck an Angel?

The family of the victim think he might be
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 8, 2013 11:57 AM CDT

A mysterious priest who showed up to pray at the site of a car crash near Center, Missouri, has some of the people involved talking about angels and miracles. Katie Lentz, 19, was hit head-on by another car Sunday morning; the Mercedes she was driving flipped and she was pinned in the car, badly injured. After 45 futile minutes spent trying to remove her from the vehicle (during which some of rescuers' equipment broke), firefighters decided to take the risky step of turning the car upright. Lentz, whose vitals were flagging, asked if someone would pray with her. "I will," a voice said, according to local fire chief Raymond Reed. A black-clad priest stepped forward, apparently "from nowhere," USA Today reports.

The priest said a prayer, anointed Lentz with oil, and told the emergency worker that their tools would work, Reed tells KHQA. Sure enough, they were able to extract Lentz, who was helicoptered to a hospital. But when rescue crews turned to thank the priest, he was nowhere to be seen. Making things even more mysterious: Not one of the 69 photos taken at the scene show him; further, the road had been shut down around the accident for 90 minutes, so there were no parked cars nearby. "We're all local people from four different towns," Reed says. "We've got only one Catholic church out of three towns, and it wasn't their priest." Lentz's mother believes it "certainly could have been an angel." As for Reed, he doesn't know "whether it was an angel ... or a priest that became our angel." Lentz suffered a slew of injuries, but her condition has been upgraded. (More Angel stories.)

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