‘I was trapped under a 280kg quad bike when I heard God say: “You’re not going to die’’’

It was a beautiful sunny day when Samantha Jackel decided to survey the property surrounding her family farmhouse on the coast of New South Wales in Australia. 

She mounted the quad bike used to get around the farm and drove towards a more isolated part of their land. The grass was long, so she slowed down, following the fence line and straining to get a clearer view. 

“I stood up to look over [the fence], not realising that the land actually sloped away – and me standing up unbalanced [the quad bike].”

The 280kg machine began to roll, taking Samantha with it as she gripped the handle. “It actually happened really slowly. As I was rolling, I was saying to myself: I’m rolling the quad bike. I’m rolling the quad bike.”

The strange clarity of the moment would be short lived, however. 

Samantha doesn’t recall hitting the ground. Instead, she went from being acutely aware of the unfolding disaster to watching the scene from outside her own body. “I could see myself under the quad bike. I had a white T-shirt on, and I could see the collar of my white T-shirt, but I couldn’t see my head. It was incredibly peaceful. I wasn’t worried about it.”

Sound and light 

Then, she heard an audible voice. “It said: ‘Sam, you’re not going to die.’ Again: ‘Sam, you’re not going to die.’ There was such intensity – a majestic voice, but full of compassion and love.”

That voice was accompanied by a white light. “I say white, but it wasn’t like you and I see. It was just incredible, intense whiteness that was so bright, but full of compassion and love…” She pauses, searching for the language. “It’s so hard to articulate because it’s just not something in this world. As this white light went through me, it was like it was breaking a darkness off me.”

Then, just as abruptly as she had shifted out of her body, she was back in it. This time, in excruciating pain. “I was yelling: ‘Jesus, help me! Jesus, Jesus, help, help!’ Suddenly the horn went. And then it stopped, and it was just silence.” Jackel says this was one of the hardest aspects of the ordeal; the sense that she was entirely alone, that no one was coming.

Her body was almost entirely pinned beneath the vehicle. The hand that was trapped was forced further and further into an unnatural position until her wrist eventually broke. Her screaming resumed: “Jesus, help me! Jesus, send angels. I need to get out of here! 

“I could now smell fuel. So, I wasn’t sure if the bike was going to blow up or what was going to happen.” It was then that 55-year-old Jackel realised finding the strength or strategy to free herself was a matter of life and death. 

As this white light went through me, it was like it was breaking a darkness off me

“Eventually, I was able to move the bike slightly to get my hand out. And once that was out, I was able to drag myself out from underneath it.”

Jackal called her husband, but the isolated location of the accident and her disorientated, frantic state made it difficult for him to find her at first. When he eventually arrived, he helped her into the car, and they sped to the hospital.

“He pulled up in the ambulance bay and shouted that I had had a bike rollover. They put me straight into emergency. They said I was a crush victim. They had a resus team thinking I might have internal injuries.” 

A life redefined

That week in Australia, there had been three other quad bike accidents of an almost identical nature – all three were fatal. Yet Jackel walked out of the hospital just five hours later with a broken wrist and nerve damage. The doctors and nurses were amazed.

But as remarkable as the physical outcome was, it did not mean the experience was easily left behind. “The first few weeks, I was in trauma. My husband would say that I was awake but having nightmares about being stuck.”

As Jackel recovered, another layer of pain surfaced. She discovered that some neighbours had heard her cries for help that day and hadn’t come to her aid. “That really impacted me,” she says. “How could anyone hear someone screaming and not come?”

The question lingered and, with it, the often-difficult work of forgiveness. “It took a long time. I had to keep praying for them. I kept asking the Lord to help me show them the compassion He showed me that day.”

But as those experiences were slowly processed and prayed through, what remained, Jackel says, was a clearer sense of the value God places on life and, in turn, the value she now places on her own. 

“For most of my life, I had been a believer. [My husband and I] were pastors before moving to the farm. But my childhood was quite rough. I was raised by alcoholic parents, and I don’t think I really valued my life and what Christ had done for me until my accident. I would say that my life started on 20 April 2023.”