OTTAWA (CBC) - An Ottawa woman credits a group of young passersby with saving her husband's life after the family car fell off its jack and crushed him as he was working beneath it outside an east end home.

Hermine Theodore offered her public thanks Monday to 19-year-old Fiston Issa and two other young men, Mbesha Ismael and Ahmed Amin, who helped hoist the car off her husband Jean-Paul Chateau on Sunday morning outside the family's townhouse on Russell Road.

"Oh, I really appreciate that," said Theodore, adding that without their help on Mother's Day, she would have been left a single mom of the couple's six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter.

Following the incident, Chateau was rushed to hospital, where he remained Monday for treatment of some broken bones and severe bruising.

Theodore said she was inside the house when her daughter came running in from the nearby parking lot shouting that “Daddy is stuck under the car.”

When she arrived, her husband was underneath the car, begging for help. Issa was also there, as was a neighbour named Thelma, who didn't want to give her last name.

"There was certain times when he was going unconscious and I just tried to talk to him," recalled Thelma, who held Chateau's hand during the ordeal. "He said he was going to die. So I told him he's not going to die. He's going to be there for his children and his wife."

Theodore and Issa tried to lift the car, but couldn't, so they called to Ismael and Amin, who were walking nearby.

The two came to help without hesitation.

Combining their strength, the four successfully raised the car and dragged Chateau to safety.

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