LANESBOROUGH — When Kacie Murphy felt the tire tread of her more than 4,100-pound red Ford Explorer Trac XLT dig into her lower right leg, she had a single thought.

“If I had put studs in that tire, my leg would be torn to shreds,” Murphy said. “And I was just so glad for once that I was broke.”

On Tuesday, she and her husband, Elijah Murphy, were on their way from Pittsfield to Adams when the truck ran out of gas on the Mall Connector Road in Lanesborough. Their 18-month-old son, Koda, was in the back seat.

What unfolded next drew more than 20 emergency personnel, shut down the road during the busy morning commute and left one firefighter injured — yet somehow, Murphy survived with her leg intact. The accident laid bare the fragility of her family’s circumstances, from a broken gas gauge to financial strain, and how a split-second decision turned their routine drive into a near-tragedy.

A bystander took this photo showing a Lanesborough police cruiser parked directly behind a Ford Explorer Tracker on Tuesday morning. Kacie Murphy, 24, of Williamstown considers herself fortunate that her right leg wasn't more seriously injured after it was pinned under the car.

That morning, as Murphy turned the corner from Route 7 onto the connector road, she said she decided not to buy gas at the nearby Gulf station. She wasn't sure how close to empty the 22.5-gallon tank was because the gas gauge on the truck has been broken since the couple bought it in 2021 for $300.

While she’s fixed other problems with this truck, she’s never had time to fix the gas gauge.

When the truck stopped, Murphy, 24, put the vehicle in neutral and asked her husband to take the wheel as she hopped out to push the truck so it could be turned around, back toward the gas station. Just as she was about to retake the wheel to back it down the road, her husband’s foot slipped off the brake and the truck began to roll.

“Koda was in the car and I panicked," she said. “I couldn’t let him roll down the hill. … So I tried hopping in, and that's when I felt it grab my foot.”

Wearing slider slippers with no socks, pajama bottoms and without a coat, she forced herself to lie down on the frigid pavement and tried not to move her leg. She didn’t want to make it worse. She started screaming.

Bystanders stopped, lending coats and offering her a hand to hold until rescue workers arrived.

The 911 call came in at 7:24 a.m. The first emergency responders to arrive were Police Officer Jason Costa followed by Lanesborough Police Chief Robert Derksen. They nudged a cruiser directly behind the stalled truck so that it wouldn’t continue to roll.

Meanwhile, a bystander had taken Koda into their car for safekeeping.

At first, emergency workers tried to use a bystander's scissor jack to lift the tire off Murphy’s leg. That didn't work.

Lanesborough Fire’s Heavy Rescue Truck arrived at 7:36 a.m. with the hydraulically powered Jaws of Life.

“They just opened them up under the vehicle,” Derksen said. “We were able to lift it up enough to slide her out.”

The moment was surreal, Murphy said.

Kacie Murphy of Williamstown recounts how her Ford Explorer Trac XLT rolled back on her leg as she tried to push it after it ran out of gas. “The nurse at the hospital even told me they've never seen anyone with this kind of injury leave with their leg, let alone without any broken bones,”  she said.

From her place on the ground pinned under the truck in 1-degree weather, Murphy pleaded with rescuers not to slash the tire, to cut the valve instead.

“The EMTs are, like, yelling at me because I'm more worried about the financials of what they're trying to do to my truck,” Murphy recalled. “And he was like, ‘You need to focus on yourself in this exact moment.’”

Ultimately, they did cut the valve, rather than slashing the tire.

Murphy spent about 15 to 20 minutes with her leg pinned.

“The nurse at the hospital even told me they've never seen anyone with this kind of injury leave with their leg, let alone without any broken bones,”  she said.

Derksen said while Murphy was lucky, what happened is a cautionary tale for anyone who may run out of gas or try to move a stalled car. The Lanesborough police chief strongly advised against pushing a car uphill in any circumstance because of the potential for it to roll uncontrolled.

"The car is now rolling down a hill, and it's going to build momentum and speed and potentially cause a secondary accident," Derksen said, adding that most service stations have loaner gas jugs that the police can fill. "The best thing they could have done is just put it in park and called the authorities so that we could have assisted them."

Murphy was sent home Tuesday with crutches and told not to put weight on her right leg, but is also relying on a wheelchair — a loan from a neighbor.

Kacie Murphy's sister, Angie Colandria, is helping to take care of her and her son while she recovers from her injuries sustained during a freak accident on Tuesday morning.

On Wednesday morning, Murphy, with her sister, Angie Colandria, and their mother, Kelly Colandria, took a ride to Sayers' Auto Wrecking's impoundment lot in Lanesborough. While she wasn't up to traveling, Murphy had to go in person for the truck to be released.

That cost $250 for the impoundment and $125 for the tow.

Sayers' Auto Wrecking fixed the tire valve and put a small amount of gas in the tank.

"At first, I thought that the truck was on top of my daughter — completely," Kelly Colandria said. "Thankfully, I don't know how, nothing's broken, and she's OK and it's just amazing."

Kelly Colandria said at first she thought that her daughter Kacie Murphy's entire body was pinned underneath her Ford Explorer Trac XLT. She later learned that it was her daughter's right leg that was pinned underneath the driver's side front tire.

First stop: the Gulf station on Route 7.

Murphy, who has her GED and is now studying early childhood education online at Bay Path University in Springfield, is thankful she’s OK, but dreads going under the truck to fix it — or figuring out how to pay someone else to repair its gas gauge.

A week ago, the Murphy family moved with their kitten, Midas, into a two-bedroom unit at 330 Cole Ave. They'd previously been living with Murphy's mother.

Elijah Murphy works fulltime as an overnight stocker at the Pittsfield Walmart, providing most of the family's income.

As the only driver in the family, Murphy now needs to rely on her mother and sister to help out with that task as well as others, particularly Koda’s care because of Murphy's limited mobility.

It costs $70 to $80 to fill the 22.5-gallon tank of the 2004 Ford Explorer Trac XLT, Kelly Colandria said.

Murphy is usually the family's cook for Christmas at her mother's place. Not this year. It'll be a Christmas for three with most of the gifts going to Koda, whom she's already shopped for.

As to the family’s $1,300 monthly rent and projected $100 to $150 electricity bills, Murphy said she "pushed around a couple bills so that we can hopefully have enough.”

Kacie Murphy is a self-published author who is having a book signing for her latest book on Dec. 17.

But Murphy has one event before the holidays that she is especially looking forward to — she’s holding a book signing on Dec. 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. on Dec. 17 at The Coffee Shop in Williamstown for her self-published book "Eclipsed," an adult Romantacy novel.

There's also a GoFundMe account that was set up by friends to help the family get through this rough patch financially.

"I obviously had someone or something over my shoulder [that day]," she said.