RAYMOND — Christina Keilt and her husband, Raul Freyre, have worked on projects outdoors and together in building and remodeling roughly nine homes in the 50 years they’ve been married. This past Sunday, they had to put those teamwork skills to use in an emergency situation that threatened Freyre’s life.

Earlier that day they had been working in the woods on the roughly 11 acres they recently purchased in Sebago, hoping to turn it into a family campground, of sorts — a place where their family and friends can gather, Keilt said.

“He knows what I can do, I know what he can do,” she said. “I don’t pretend to know more than I do and he doesn’t pretend to know more, so I think we’re very compatible.”

They developed a whistle system for when they are working away from each other at the site in case one of them gets hurt and needs to alert the other — just one of the ways they’ve learned to work cohesively in their marriage, she said.

With their truck loaded with tools, ladders and other items they had been using that day in Sebago, they headed to their daughter’s house, who lives next to them, to check on her chickens while she and her family were away for the weekend, Keilt said.

When they got there, they noticed several of her daughter’s chickens were missing with feathers all over the place and a hole in the fence from what looked like a predator attack, she said.

Keilt first jumped out of the truck and Freyre followed. Usually Freyre shuts off his 2012 Toyota Tacoma whenever he gets out of it but in the rush to see the chickens he left it running, he said.

He went back to his truck to get ties to mend the chicken coop fence and that’s when his truck started to roll back in the slightly inclined driveway, he said. He leaned into the truck through an open door and shut the engine off but it did not stop the vehicle.

Freyre became trapped by the truck body and could not get out of the way. He was dragged down the driveway as it gained speed, Keilt said.

“I was watching the truck go faster and faster, and I said ‘jump, jump out of the truck’ and he couldn’t, he was being dragged with the door open,” she said.

Keilt watched as she saw her husband struggle with the moving vehicle. Then it went over the side of a small wooden bridge nearby, resulting in Freyre being knocked free to the ground as the truck’s rear tire ran over his left leg, she said. The truck crashed into a tree not far from where Freyre was lying.

She ran down to her husband and started to panic when she saw his leg and hip disfigured in a “Z” shape on the ground and blood everywhere, she said. Her husband was moaning in pain loudly.

Though she spent her career as a nurse and midwife, often assisting patients in the process of giving birth and addressing emergencies as they came up, she went into a sort of shock at the sight of her husband’s body, she said.

“He was just so impossibly hurt,” she said. “I didn’t know where to begin; it was such an impossible hurt and there was so much blood,” she said. “I have come to realize that I think I was in shock or something.”

She ran to her son’s house, who also lives nearby, hoping to get help from him but he was not home and she could not find his landline phone, she said. Realizing it was a mistake to leave Freyre alone in the state he was in, she rushed back and started to snap out of her shock.

He told her to pull the belt from his pants and make a tourniquet around his thigh. He helped pull it tight and held it there while she called the paramedics, she said.

A deputy from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office arrived first and provided assistance, then EMTs from Raymond Fire and Rescue arrived after about 15 minutes and worked quickly and methodically to apply a professional tourniquet. Freyre was taken to Jordan-Small Middle School where LifeFlight of Maine picked him up, she said.

LifeFlight was called for assistance in case he needed a blood transfusion, which was not possible to do in an ambulance, according to Keilt. He was diverted to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston because there was too much fog to land at Maine Medical Center in Portland.

Though Freyre was bleeding and in pain, he did not lose consciousness until the doctors put him under anesthesia to put a metal rod in his leg from his knee to his hip, he said.

Doctors revealed that he had a compound fracture on his femur bone, which protruded out of his skin, Keilt said. He also had some scrapes and bruises around other parts of his body.

The couple praise the officer, paramedics and doctors at CMMC for treating Freyre quickly and keeping him as comfortable as he could be. And after two days in the hospital, he was discharged and taken home where he is currently recovering in his recliner.

Keilt said she feels fortunate to have her husband with her because the situation could have been worse if Freyre had not gotten loose from the truck when he did — he might have been crushed by the door he was trapped behind when the truck became wedged against the tree, she said.

For Freyre, he will never leave his vehicles running and unattended again, he said. For Keilt, she will always keep her phone on her and turned on in case of another emergency, she said.

Freyre’s bone is expected to heal after about six weeks, Keilt said, but it is unclear how long it will take him to fully recover and medical professionals have not given them a clear answer as to how long that will take.

However, Freyre has survived several strokes, with the last one roughly a decade ago, and bounced back to normal after every one outside of having some slight mobility difficulties in his right leg, he said. He expects to make a full recovery after this injury, as well, hopefully being able to walk again by the end of August.

“I plan fully to be back in action,” he said. Keilt adding, “and we gotta finish the campground.”