Couple cheat death twice in 24 hours

ROSENDALE, N.Y., June 25 (UPI) -- A New York couple cheated death twice in 24 hours, first when their canoe upended in surging rapids and then when a tree crushed their windshield as they drove.

"I should live in a protective bubble," Kieran Liggan, 24, told the (Kingston, N.Y.) Daily Freeman.

When the couple escaped uninjured from a back window of their Nissan after an 80-foot tree fell through the car's windshield, "I was like, 'Seriously, are you freaking kidding me?'" Liggan said.

A day earlier, they were stranded for 40 minutes in the Esopus Creek, a Hudson River tributary 85 miles north of New York City whose rapids were swollen due to recent rains. Police and fire crews eventually rescued them.

Liggan's father said the couple surviving back-to-back accidents Sunday and Monday was a Father's Day blessing.

"My father passed away about three months ago, and I have a feeling that he's looking over them," Bill Liggan said.

"With the creek, my thought was, thank God they were all wearing their life jackets," he told the newspaper. "With the tree, another second sooner, the tree would have come down on top of the windshield instead of the bottom of the windshield."

"I can't tell if I'm lucky or unlucky," Kieran Liggan said. "I believe that there is definitely somebody out there pulling the strings. My husband said ... it's like there's two people -- one person wants us dead and one with a little bit more pull wants us alive."

She didn't know why the tree fell, but noted the sky was clear at the time.