Teen helped man in a wheelchair raced home during tornado warning

Gregory Beck was leaving Schnucks on St. Charles Rock Road in St. John when tornado sirens began going off.

Drivers on the road became frantic and everyone rushed to go home. But for Gregory, getting home wasn’t as easy. That’s because he is using a manual wheelchair.

“Everyone kept telling me the storm is coming and you need to hurry up and get home,” he said.

Gregory lost his right leg last July and the other one in March. Diabetes has also made him legally blind. Because he can’t drive at all, he pushes himself up and down the hill just to get home.

“I can’t see out of my right eye and everything in my left eye is mainly a fog,” Gregory said.

As he tried to cross St. Charles Rock Road during the oncoming tornado, Gregory says that drivers began to honk and yell at him. He made it to a nearby gas station when a car suddenly pulled up.

Amber Gilleylen stopped the car and her son, 16-year-old Seth Phillips, jumped out of the car to help the man.

“This lady and her son were hollering at me like ‘are you okay?” he said. “Very lovely lady driving and her son. Just the greatest people and very concerned about other people, which America needs to start doing more of.”

As Seth pushed Gregory up the hill towards his home, Amber took a video of the kind act to share with her mom and posted it on Facebook. Amber says she hopes that other teens who’ll watch the clip will see that it is cool to help others.

“My hope is that other teenagers will see that it’s the cool thing to do, you know, it’s good to help other people. It doesn’t make you uncool to stop and help someone who needs it,” she said.

Amber is one proud mother, but this good deed by her son didn’t come as a surprise to her.

“His only complaint was ‘it makes me sad that people would rather fly by and honk at a disabled person rather than to lend a hand,” Amber said.

“We need to be caring for each other and helping each other out,” Seth said.

Gregory says that it normally takes him about 25 minutes and breaks as many as 10 times to get up the hill. He’s very thankful for the teen’s kind act, for without him, he wouldn’t have gotten home safe and sound

The tornado might have gone, but the family wasn’t done helping the gentleman. After “sitting down as a family”, they decided to help Gregory one more time by setting up a GoFundMe so he could buy an electric wheelchair which will better suit his needs. So far, the fund has collected $1,930 out of the $4,000 goal.

Every amount goes a long way! To contribute to the campaign, click HERE.

Check out the video below from Inside Edition to learn more about the story.