This undated photo provided by Joe Decker Monday, March 5, 2012, shows Decker with his 36-year-old wife, Stephanie Decker. Decker told the Courier-Journal his wife lost parts of both her legs when the family’s home collapsed onto her Friday in Marysville, Ind., as she was shielding their two children from a devastating tornado. The Deckers’ 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter weren’t injured. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the Decker family)By RICK CALLAHAN
Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS – An Indiana woman who saved her two children by binding them together with a blanket and shielding them with her body as a tornado ripped apart their house lost parts of both her legs, which were crushed by the falling debris, her husband says.
Stephanie Decker, a 36-year-old sleep specialist, lost one leg above the knee and the other above the ankle, her husband said Monday. She was in serious but stable condition at a Kentucky hospital. The couple’s 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter survived Friday’s storm unscathed.
“I told her, ‘They’re here because of you,”‘ Joe Decker said by telephone from the University of Louisville Hospital. “I let her know that nothing else matters. I said, ‘You’re going to be here for your kids, and you get to see them grow up.”‘