Facebook post saves two friends left for dead after horror crash
Two friends travelling in Bali were saved by a single Facebook post after they crashed their scooter in the dead of night.
Friends Michael Lythcott, 36, and Stacey Eno, were travelling in Ubud, Bali, on August 22 when the horror crash occurred.
The American pair met while travelling in Thailand in February and arranged to meet up in Bali.
Mr Lythcott is an American expat living in Lisbon, Portugal, while Ms Eno teaches English in Gwangju, South Korea.
They were riding on one scooter when their brakes failed, propelling them over an embankment and into a ravine at about 2.30am in the morning.
“Me and Stacey were riding on my scooter back to the hotel about 2.30 to 3 in the morning,” Mr Lythcott said in a video from his hospital bed, which was posted on Facebook.
He said that a vehicle approached them and when he tried to brake, he realised the scooter wouldn’t slow down and they went over the embankment.
“We kept moving forward, and went over the edge,” he said.
“I don’t remember anything after that, obviously except waking up in some kind of woods or jungle on an incline, slowly slipping down in the darkness with no glasses.”
After Mr Lythcott regained consciousness, he realised he was injured and couldn’t use his left wrist. He called out to Ms Eno, who told him that she was also injured and could not move.
Quick-thinking Mr Lythcott realised that he still had his American phone in his jacket, even though his local phone went flying.
Using one hand, he turned on international roaming and typed an SOS Facebook status that said: “Help. In danger. Call police.”
“Thankfully had my cell phone in my pocket. That’s when I was able to put the Facebook SOS and it saved our lives,” Mr Lythcott said.
After posting the status, Mr Lythcott’s Facebook friend Aimee Sparks asked him to drop a pin to share his location.
Following this, a friend in Vancouver called people in Indonesia while a Los Angeles-based friend used digital maps to discover the pair were situated near a waterfall.
Mr Lythcott received a call from the authorities.
“I got a call from a guy named Joe from the [consulate] who said help was coming but to help him find me,” Mr Lythcott told CNN.
“I told him there was a hotel near my GPS pin, that I’d be just before that hotel, then my battery died.”
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Eventually a rescue party found the pair and took them to the hospital in the back of a flatbed truck.
“Stacey had a broken arm, cheekbones, and nose,” Zuri Lythcott Taylor, Mr Lycott’s sister posted on a GoFundMe page to raise money for his medical costs.
“Michael was badly hurt, a skull fracture, broken wrist, internal damage, cracked ribs/spine, and perforated bowels.”
Mr Lythcott is due to travel to Atlanta to be with his family on Tuesday, his sister wrote on the GoFundMe page. Ms Eno is still recovering in Bali.
A GoFundMe page to cover Mr Lythcott’s medical expenses has raised over $50,000, while a page for Ms Eno has raised over $18,000.
