By Faiza Mahamud and Randy Furst

The call Mahamud Abdisamad got from his friend Wali Aar last month was urgent. Aar’s car battery had died and he needed a jump start.

He grabbed his jumper cables and headed out the door, not knowing that the night’s course of events would upend both their lives.

“I heard a loud noise,” Abdisamad, 34, recalled from that night. “I looked down to see my legs were gone.”

The driver of a third vehicle suspected to be under the influence of drugs slammed into the rear of Aar’s SUV, pushing the two cars together with Abdisamad in between.

The crash severed Abdisamad’s legs, and Aar’s left leg was so badly damaged it had to be amputated.

After fleeing a war-torn country, living in refugee camps and starting new lives in the United States, the two Bloomington men now face a new ordeal — the daunting prospect of extensive rehabilitation, huge medical bills and no income to support their families seven weeks after the gruesome Oct. 12 crash. The men, long accustomed to their own independence, have now been embraced by a community that, in little over a month, raised nearly $8,700. While grateful, both say that the damage to their bodies is only part of their grief, and their attorneys say recouping costs through insurance or the courts may be difficult.

“It’s extremely sad,” says Fathi Gelle, Abdisamad’s sister. “They never needed to ask for help, so this new reality affects them badly.”

Both Bloomington men are married and are the sole breadwinners for their families. Abdisamad has five children, Aar has seven.

“I used to be somebody who worked for my kids, for my wife,” Aar, 35, said at a Bloomington rehab center where he is recovering. “Now I’m confused. I’m sure they are worried to death.”

The two men were born in Somalia, lived in refugee camps in Kenya and came with family members to the United States as teenagers. They worked at a turkey processing facility in Faribault where they met and later at a glass factory in Owatonna. Abdisamad started his own courier company a year ago.

The night of the crash, Aar phoned Abdisamad from Interstate 35W at the 90th St. exit where his Ford Expedition SUV had stalled out. They eventually made it to Penn Avenue, where Aar was connecting the jumper cables and the crash occurred.

Abdisamad knew immediately that his legs were gone, adding “I was trying to save my body.”

Wedged between the two vehicles, he held on to both hoods and pushed himself off to the side.

“I heard this female voice screaming, saying ‘It’s my fault. I killed them,’ ” he said.

He could also hear his friend, Aar, screaming in pain.

Read more: Crash, loss of legs forced two friends to rebuild their lives — again

Source Star Tribune