Matt Hamill saves child in bizarre highway incident
Mat Hamill: “If she hadn’t been stopped I definitely feel like someone would’ve ran into something. The mother was on drugs and had been drinking apparently.”
Matt Hamill came out of retirement and was scheduled to fight Thiago Silva at World Series of Fighting 19 on Saturday, March 28. After the weigh ins he was unable to hold down food, and was diagnosed with a stomach virus and sinus infection. The doctor said he couldn’t fight, and he was replaced with Teddy Holder. Then Holder got the KO, and a shot at the inaugural WSOF light heavyweight title.
That was not fun to watch from the sidelines.
Then three days later Hamill was driving in Ohio, and encountered a car going the wrong way down the highway. He turned around and gave chase. When the car veered onto the grass median and began to slow, Hamill pull over, leapt from his car, and and gave chase on foot. When he reached the car he saw a six-year-old boy screaming inside the car, punched out the window, and stopped the vehicle.
Shaun Al-Shatti has the story for MMAfighting.
“Everyone was going like 70 miles per hour,” said Hamill. “She was driving the wrong way, just kind of swerving around. She was going slower but she was going on the wrong side of the street, and you could her face, she was kind of drooling. There was obviously something going on with her that just wasn’t right.”
“It seemed like Pac-Man, trying to avoid all the little ghosts. She was all over the place.”
“If she hadn’t been stopped I definitely feel like someone would’ve ran into something. The mother was on drugs and had been drinking apparently.”
The mother, Nicole Lamendola, 27, failed all field sobriety tests, was arrested, and charged her with driving while intoxicated, a felony, and second-degree reckless endangerment. The child is in the care of a family member.
Despite the aborted comeback after a layoff of three years, Hamill, 38, says he will “of course” fight again, but needs to get healthy first.
