“I ran to the passenger side, where all the damage was, and there was this 11-year-old kid, and I looked at him, and his calf, which is about as big as my thigh, was completely ripped apart, so I could see his tibia and his fibula, just a big chunk of him bleeding. And he had an arterial bleed in his right wrist,” he recounted.

Van Orden retrieved socks from his suitcase to create improvised tourniquets.

“By then, probably 10 people had also pulled over to help, I’m like, does somebody have a knife? And they’re like, yep. So I cut the seat belts off and then made tourniquets,” he said.

He described how others quickly joined in the effort to save the child.

“Some big old Iowa farm dude, probably 60-something, rips off a windshield wiper for his arm, then another lady there said she was a medic. She wound up grabbing a piece of metal and made a tourniquet on his leg, and then all of us packed him up and got him up into the ambulance,” Van Orden explained.

The quick response likely saved the boy’s life. “It took about 10 to 15 minutes. He would’ve bled to death,” Van Orden said.

On Monday, the congressman visited the child at a hospital in Des Moines.

Van Orden reflected on the incident by pointing to the cooperation of bystanders who stepped in to help.