Ask 88-year-old Seth Gabriel or his 90-year-old sister, Virginia Thompson.

Not only do they believe, they can tell you when and where their miracle happened.

They’ve got a few color snapshots and clippings from the Salisbury Post. They’ve got dozens of witnesses, including friends, police officers and firefighters.

Nearly three weeks ago, on a bright, sunny Saturday morning, they had gone to the Shepherds community in Iredell to get a piece of furniture with family history.

Around lunch time they were returning. As they neared the South Main Street intersection with Mooresville Road, Gabriel glanced at the stoplight. He says it was green.

Maybe he glanced away, maybe the sun blinded him.

Seconds later he saw a tractor- trailer right in front of him.

He thinks he remembers saying, “Virginia, get your head down.”

He remembers the crash as his 1998 Mercury Grand Marquis went under the trailer, shearing most of the roof away.

He kept asking “Virginia, are you all right?”

She didn’t reply.

Salisbury firefighters arrived on the scene quickly, crawling under the trailer and cutting the driver’s side door away.

Gabriel, carefully removed from the car, had just a bump on the side of his head. Once free of the wreckage, he watched and worried as emergency personnel worked nearly an hour to free his sister.

She remembers little of the collision or the aftermath, as a crew tore away at the car, trying to get her out.

“Someone kept saying, ‘Keep breathing but don’t move.’ I heard that over and over,” said Thompson.

She sustained a broken rib and several cuts on her scalp from the broken glass as the windshield disintegrated. She spent a couple of days at Rowan Regional Medical Center.

While the broken rib hurts, she was delighted to get the stitches out and get her hair done.

The pair have turned into celebrities at Trinity Oaks, where friends and neighbors ask about their near-death experience.

Thompson called her daughter, Jeannine, in California to tell her she’d been in a wreck.

“I told her not to come, to wait and come at Christmas,” said Thompson, who retired years ago as an interior designer. She also worked at Belk department store for many years.

Gabriel, who worked in the Mooresville post office for decades, already has a new car, a 1999 Mercury Grand Marquis.

For years he drove a Ford Taurus. A friend told him several years ago that he would be safer in a big car.

He made the switch to the top-of-the-line Mercury and figures that has a little to do with the miracle on South Main Street.

Lt. Darrell Conner, a 27-year veteran of the Salisbury Police Department, said it was the worst accident he has seen where the occupants weren’t seriously injured.

“The policeman said ‘God was in that car,’” said Gabriel.

He’s convinced.

“It wasn’t totaled,” he says. “It was T-totaled.”

Gabriel plans to write Salisbury Police Chief Chris Herring a letter commending his officers on how nice and helpful they were.

He also plans to be “extra cautious” when driving, particularly at stoplights.

When he went back to pick through the wreckage, Gabriel found his sister’s glasses undamaged.

The 100-year-old clock they had picked up that morning was still in the back seat, covered in bits of tiny glass.