(Originally posted June 29, 2009 around 7:15 p.m.)

A man was struck by a Ford Expedition and pinned against his parked vehicle at the Elephant Super Car Wash on Bel-Red Road on Monday at around 5 p.m.

Witnesses said one of the car wash employees, a 48-year-old male, was moving the SUV to a vacuuming station and appeared to have hit the gas instead of the brake while trying to stop, causing the SUV to charge into the victim and the parked Lexus.

The victim, a 74-year-old Bellevue man, was bleeding profusely from his legs and barely conscious while being attended to, according to witnesses. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he was listed in critical condition while undergoing surgery at the Reporter deadline.

“His legs were shattered,” said the SUV owner, who was not in his car when the accident happened.

Linda Huizingh, a dental hygienist from Bellevue, saw the collision and grabbed a first-aid kit from her car. She was the first to respond.

“No one was doing anything,” she said. “I just thought, ‘Okay, mom, take charge here.’ It was pretty black and white.”

Huizingh applied tourniquets to the victim’s legs with help from another witness – reportedly a medical student completing his residency at a local hospital.

“I just kept twisting my towel until I saw the blood stop spurting out,” Huizingh said.

Medics arrived at the scene in under five minutes, according to one witness.

The victim’s wife was in the car when the collision occurred.

“She ran out and said ‘It’s a new car, it’s a new car,'” Huizingh said. “She didn’t know her husband was pinned. She started screaming when she saw him.”

The victim’s wife was taken away from the scene by her son, who arrived to pick her up.

The SUV owner, who chose to remain anonymous, said that his radiator was punctured during the accident.

Huizingh said she always keeps a first-aid kit in her car, along with clean towels and t-shirts, in case a loved one is involved in an emergency.

Huizingh also said she is accustomed to a certain amount of trauma from being a mother of three who occasionally had to deal with broken and protruding bones.

A car wash employee who chose to remain anonymous said police had told him they were not going to arrest the worker who drove the Ford Expedition.

“They’re describing it as something similar to an industrial accident,” the man said.