A 4-year-old boy who was “clinically decapitated” in a recent vehicle crash in Idaho survived after a rescuer resisted the urge to pick up and cradle the screaming child and instead held his head in place for a half-hour, most likely saving his life, his mother and the rescuer said.
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He then told his wife to hold the boy’s head steady until emergency services arrived. I looked back and he is just hunched over.
That’s when off-duty police officer Joel Woodward and his wife, Leah Woodward, who were returning from a camping trip, came across the wreckage.
The screams became audible, Woodward said, when she and her husband ran from their vehicle to help pull survivors from the crash.
Woodward held Killian’s head straight for over half an hour before paramedics arrived. She tried again and again to move and turn to him. Killian Gonzalez’s skull was separated from his spine in the accident, with a fracture at the base of his skull where the spinal cord connects to the brain stem.
But little did Killian know, he’d be just fine!
Killian ruptured his spleen, broke his arm and multiple ribs.
Despite the devastating accident, the boy is in high spirits, already back on his feet and walking and eating by himself. Brandy broke her arm, femur and the top of her tibia. She used a blanket to cover the child so his mother could not see how badly he was hurt.
“Our first instinct was basically just to get out and ascertain any injuries and see what we could do to help”, Joel Woodward told CTV News Channel on Wednesday.
Eyewitnesses heard the child’s screams and rushed to help, smashing the window to gain access to the vehicle before discovering the seriousness of Killian’s injuries.
In an internal decapitation, the head is connected to the spine only by strands of tissue or muscle. Killian’s family says the quick thinking of Leah Woodward likely saved the boy’s life.
Killian was released from St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital after about two weeks – with a neurosurgeon deciding the little boy didn’t need surgery.
Killian is doing fantastic everyone!
“She saved my baby”, Brandy said. “The ankle is just a bunch of pins at this point”, Gonzalez said.
“He was really lifeless”, Kaupanger-Woodward added. “They keep telling me he’s the talk of the hospital”, said Gonzalez, who was recovering at a separate hospital and had not, as of last weekend, been reunited with her son.
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A GoFundMe page has been set up by his family to help cover the medical costs that will be involved in the pair’s recovery.
