It was the most ordinary of moments — a father buckling his small daughter into her car seat at a Venice curb. Then a truck changed everything.

A routine errand turns violent

Jordan Stannard was loading his 2-year-old daughter, Sadie, into the family car near the corner of Venice Boulevard and Abbot Kinney Boulevard when an out-of-control truck struck the scene, he told ABC7. In the instant before impact, the 38-year-old moved to shield his daughter. She walked away unharmed. He did not.

The truck crushed his left foot. Stannard later described the damage in stark terms, likening what he saw to a foot that had stepped on a bomb.

Surgery, and a long recovery

Stannard was taken to a Los Angeles-area hospital, where surgeons could not save the lower leg. They performed a below-the-knee amputation; his right foot, also injured, will require further care, according to a GoFundMe campaign organized by a family friend. He will need a prosthetic limb and, the family says, will likely require single-story housing while he relearns daily movement. Stannard, his wife Julie and their two children — including a newborn son — are adjusting to a life reshaped in a few seconds.

'A trade I would make all day long'

What is striking, in Stannard's telling, is the absence of bitterness. "If you told me, 'You just have to trade your foot to be with your daughters for the rest of your life,'" he told ABC7, "that's a trade that I would make all day long." He has set himself a goal that his medical team has not yet endorsed but that gives his rehabilitation a finish line: to run a future Los Angeles Marathon on a prosthetic.

Community steps in

In the days after the crash, friends launched the GoFundMe to help cover a prosthetic, rehabilitation, housing changes and lost income. By late June it had drawn hundreds of donors and approached its $100,000 goal — a response that reflects both the family's standing in the neighborhood and Venice's long-running worry about safety at its busiest intersections.

What's still unknown

As of publication, the Los Angeles Police Department had not publicly identified the driver of the truck or said whether any charges had been filed, and the circumstances that caused the driver to lose control had not been confirmed. The Herald has sought comment from LAPD's West Traffic Division.

For Stannard, the legal questions seem secondary to a simpler accounting. His daughter is safe, his newborn is home, and he is, by his own measure, still here — working toward the day he can run again.