Texas Truck Driver Caught in Tornado Speechless After Seeing Viral Video

The driver of a red truck that was flipped and spun by a Texas tornado has come forward and spoken out about the incident.

The driver, 16-year-old Riley Leon, said he was still in shock about the event. He also admitted that he was, at first, speechless when he saw a video of his narrow escape in Elgin circulating on social media.

The video of this moment was caught by storm chaser Brian Emfinger on Monday. The clip was posted to his Twitter page and has been viewed over 6.7 million times.

"Omg...just going thru my video. This is a story about a red truck and a tornado. I cannot believe they drove away like that," the caption of the video said.

Leon spoke to Fox 26 Houston and was asked how he felt when he realized that someone had captured the incident that saw his car be flipped on its side, and spun around before being flipped back upright. Leon, who was able to drive away, escaped with minor cuts although his vehicle was damaged.

"I was speechless. At the same time, I was like I have proof for insurance, but most of the time I'm speechless seeing how my truck got thrown like paper," Leon said.

"Yeah, I don't want this to happen to nobody, yeah. Wouldn't recommend it at all. [When] there's little alerts that there is going to be bad weather. Stay home. Don't risk your life.

"If anything, the number one rule, the number one thing I learned was if there's going to be bad weather, stay home. No matter how important the thing is to you, stay home, your life, your life matters more than other stuff."

Leon explained where he was coming from before he got caught in the tornado and recounted what happened after the viral clip cut off.

"I was coming back from my job interview at Whataburger. And I had missed two U-turns and so I saw that U-turn and I'm like, I'm going to take this one," Leon said.

"I can see it and I don't see nothing strange around. And around right when I was going to take the U-turn, that's when the tornado [came] and it lifted my truck. That's when the infamous video of me came out.

"Everybody told me the weather's going to be bad, but I never expected it to be. I never expected that tornado to be at the same moment as me and at the same place."

At the end of the viral clip, Leon can be seen driving off and continuing down the road. Leon explained that after driving away a short distance he stopped.

"I stay there for a good minute and then a brown van comes up and that's when I start to drive and I do a turn and I parked next to him," Leon said.

"He's like 'Are you okay?' 'I'm okay, but I lost my phone'. He was like 'You want to borrow my phone and call your parents?'

"I'm like 'Yeah' and that's when I called my mom and my dad and they're like 'Are you okay?', and I'm like 'Yeah but my truck's gone.'"

Leon said he had no initial plans to tell his parents but they said they saw the clip on social media. After doing a few local interviews, he said at school, to which he has now returned, students have taken to calling him tornado boy.