Mum feared her son would die after he was rushed to hospital when dog knocked vending machine on him
A mum feared that her son's life was left hanging in the balance after an accident involving a dog and a vending machine.
But she claims that a guardian angel saved her boy's life after the shocking incident.
Last month, 11-year-old Lake Thompson's health was in a serious condition after an unstrapped vending machine was knocked off a trailer by one of the family dogs who was going over for some cuddles.
As it was set to be unloaded, pooch Gus rushed over to the boy as he was petting the other dog, Dozer. But the weight of Gus, an English Springer Spaniel, forced the machine to tip and fall onto his loving owner.
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The noise of the machine crashing onto the boy alerted Lake's father, Mark Thompson, who ran out to the trailer and managed to life it enough so that his son could roll out from under it, attributing the strength he mustered to do this to adrenaline.
After being rushed to hospital, it was found that Lake was suffering from a collapsed lung, a broken shoulder blade and a bleeding elbow.
Mum Nicole Patterson, who claims that her son could have died or got brain damage from the accident, is warning parents to keep heavy items on a flat surface to prevent any possible mishaps like this one.
Based in Grove City, Pennsylvania, US, she explained: "He could have lost his life, he definitely had a guardian angel looking over him. It's very bitter sweet.
"The frame of the bait machine is solid steel. If he was two inches taller or two inches further back, that steel frame would have hit his head.
"Because of the weight of it he would not have survived or he would have had brain damage, it would have crushed his head between the steel frame of it and the steel back gate of the trailer."
Nicole, 38, and Mark, 41, originally bought the live bait machine for Lake, who aimed to sell worms to fishermen to make more pocket money.
Standing at six feet, the machine was up in their trailer upon arriving home and left it unhooked, when an excited Lake stood in the danger zone and ended up severely injured.
Nicole revealed: "We had it unbuckled and ready to be taken off of our trailer. One dog happened to be sitting on the trailer, which was right in front of where the bait machine was.
"Lake walked up onto the trailer and was petting the dog and playing with him. The other dog, which is the youngest of all three of our dogs so he's very rambunctious and runs around and is kind of a crazy fool, comes running up onto the trailer and he was just enough weight to tip the back of the trailer.
"Because we had unhooked the straps from it, thinking that we were going to take the bait machine off the trailer, there were no straps for the bait machine holding it onto the trailer.
"It fell on him and at the time his dad was in the bait shop."
Despite the accident, Lake didn't cry or freak out at first, communicating with his Dad after being saved, only starting to freak out when he saw blood on his hand.
Lake spent a night in hospital, but wanted to go back to school just days later to show off his injuries to friends, which was a relief to Nicole, who said: "He's actually doing a lot better than what I would have thought."
She also sent an urgent warning out to other parents to beware of the dangers of leaving heavy objects around children.
"As parents we have guilted ourselves so much. There's always going to be somebody out there saying 'you should have never left it on the trailer'. We know our mistakes," she began to say.
"There's no guarantee that even if we would have strapped the machine that it wouldn't have fallen on him. It is definitely a lesson learned on our end, and a lesson learned for our son. A lesson that we are all still here to tell.
"[My advice is to] make sure the machine is level and that it's on a flat ground to reduce the chance of it tipping over - it's the same with TVs and dressers with little kids."
Joshua Nair