On Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025, a serious accident occurred at the intersection of Briargate Parkway and Royal Pine Drive. There is no information about the accident online, so the only sources are the two girls who witnessed the accident firsthand- and who responded with amazing bravery.

Liberty freshmen, Gracie Allison and Haley Melnyk, witnessed the accident and responded to it with amazing bravery and courage.

“I was thinking, okay, how badly is somebody hurt,” Allison said. “My best friend screamed at me to call 911, and as I’m seeing it, I’m instinctively pulling it up on my phone.”

The accident occurred during Liberty’s band, dance, and theatre department’s annual mattress fundraiser. The girls were advertising on that corner to convince people to turn into the school.

“Me and Gracie, we were sitting on the curb… and while we were sitting there, we heard, like, honking, and the next second we looked up, it was a big accident,” Melnyk provided when asked about the accident. 

“I handed my phone to one of the adults and it took like 20 minutes for them to give me my phone back,” Allison said. “I was scared one of the cars was going to explode… I saw a bunch of adults rushing over, so I was like, okay, it’s probably okay.”

“When it first happened, I froze up for a second,” Melnyk remembered. “And then I was like, call 911, I was yelling at her to call 911.”

It’s amazing to see that high school students feel capable to respond to even life threatening situations, without the expectation of reward or praise. Even under pressure, the girls were able to remember to call authorities and to be concerned for the safety of everyone involved.

“I was just really hoping that they were both okay,” Melnyk said, both girls just simply doing it to be good people.

“It was scary, but also rewarding to know that I saved someone’s life,” Allison said. “I was doing it just to do it, it was instinctive, and also I was scared … but I also wanted to make sure that everybody’s okay, call someone, get help.”