Deer smashes through car windshield and lands on driver's lap in Kansas crash

The driver said police told her "it was pretty much a miracle" that the accident wasn't worse.

A Topeka, Kansas, woman and her baby avoided serious injury in a recent highway accident where a deer came crashing through their car windshield.

Billie Fox was driving -- with her infant son in the backseat -- through Wabaunsee County on Interstate 70 in the early evening of June 21 when she spotted a deer on the opposite side of the highway. But the deer then entered Fox's side of the road before she had enough time to react and avoid a collision.

“I tried to slow down but it didn’t work,” Fox told NBC affiliate KSNT.

Fox's car crashed into the deer, sending it flying through the windshield and onto her lap. The deer put the car into park after entering the vehicle, leaving Fox and her son sitting in the middle of the interstate.

“I freaked out,” Fox said. "When he smacked my windshield I pretty much didn’t know what to do, but I was like I got my little one in the backseat let’s get to the side of the road.”

With the deer on her lap, Fox was able to safely pull the car over to the side of the road.

Fox suffered what she described as a lingering back injury from the crash, but her son was OK. She said the Wabaunsee County Sheriff’s Department told her "it was pretty much a miracle that it wasn’t worse."

The Lewis Collision Center in Topeka, where Fox sent her car, told KSNT the crash caused about $15,000 in damage and that the car was totaled.