For more than four years, Demarcus Tinsley was severely injured in a car accident when his car went underneath a tractor that took off his entire roof.
He was barely able to dial 911 for assistance before falling unconscious following the 2019 accident. “I woke up and I didn’t see myself, but I could feel myself under something,” he recalled to KTBS.
“My first instinct was to just drive myself away from the tractor-trailer, and once I drove out from under there I got out of the car and I ended up calling 911. That was my first instinct.”
“While I was on the phone with 911 I could see how crushed my face was. Like all around this area,” Tinsley said.
Fast forward to 2024, Tinsley has overcome the odds to earn a college degree, according to Gray News. Thanks to his determination to not let the accident define who he is and who he wants to be in the future, he graduated from Grambling State University (GSU), located in northern Louisiana about 40 miles south of the Arkansas border, with a degree in criminal justice in December. His historic academic feat was shared by the university on Facebook.
According to GSU, Tinsley decided to return to school after having multiple facial reconstruction surgeries and having to learn how to talk and breathe again.
“If anyone out there is going through something like this, I just want them to know, stay positive, keep your head up because it’s always a light at the end of the tunnel,” Tinsley said in a statement.
What is more, he credits his family, teammates, and professors for believing in him.
