OTTAWA — Who says superheroes only are in comic books?

A young girl and her family are calling a local man their “Superman” after he lifted a car off of her in an accident early Friday morning.

Nick Harris, 32, was dropping off his daughter, 8-year-old Cheyenne, at Eugene Field Elementary school shortly before 8 a.m. when he saw the incident unfolding on Tremont Avenue — a driver backing her vehicle out of a driveway who was about to hit a student.

“I was getting ready to pull the emergency brake when I looked up and saw the vehicle backing over her,” Harris said. “I didn’t even think. I ran over there as fast as I could, grabbed the rear end of the car and lifted and pushed as hard as I could to get the tire off the child.”

That’s when he said he noticed the girl, a 6-year-old first-grader, was one of his daughter’s closest friends from school.

He told the driver of the car, 26-year-old Sarah Osladil, to put it in neutral to get the pressure off the girl, he said. He then carried the girl, who was screaming in pain, he said, over to the sidewalk.

“I got her backpack unstuck underneath the car,” Harris said. “I didn’t want to jerk her, but I had to move her, so I put her on the side of the road next to the driveway.”

He said he was going to go get his phone to call 911, but the girl said she wanted him to stay with her.

“I was the only one she knew, so I stayed there until her mother got there,” Harris said.

An ambulance took the child to Ransom Memorial Hospital, Ottawa, and then by air ambulance to Children’s Mercy Hospital, Kansas City, Mo.

However, she suffered only minor injuries, including a concussion and some road rash, Harris said, and was able to go home the same day.

Harris said he visited her later that day.

When he got there, he was greeted by an alert, happy and grateful girl, who ran up to him and gave him a hug, Harris said.

“I was shocked,” Harris said. “I really didn’t expect for her to be running up to me and squeezing me. From what I seen with my own two eyes, she should not be walking right now.”

And that wasn’t the only thing that amazed Harris that day. He still doesn’t know how he found the strength to lift the vehicle off of her, he said.

“I know later on that day I tried a couple different times to lift a car like I did, and I couldn’t do it,” Harris said. “But somehow, adrenaline, hand of God, whatever you want to call it, I don’t know how I did it. It just happened.”

The next day, the girl attended Harris’ daughter’s roller skating birthday party, where she told everyone he was her Superman.

But Harris said he was simply a parent doing the right thing.

“I seen a situation, and I handled the situation the way I thought it needed handled,” Harris said. “The car had to get off of her. I reacted without thinking.

“I don’t consider myself a hero at all. People can call it what they want, but I’m just a dad who happened to be at the right place at the right time. I hope any parent who would have seen what I seen would have reacted the same way.”

He wasn’t hoping for any recognition, he said. He was just grateful the girl was OK.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Harris said. “To me, it was payment enough when she gave me that huge hug and said, ‘Thanks, Superman.' "