A teenage girl is clinging to life at a Utah children’s hospital after being thrown headfirst onto a sidewalk while car surfing.
Ava Broadhead, 15, joined her friends at a park outside Salt Lake City on Wednesday night after her school’s homecoming parade was canceled due to “poor air quality.”
Now the young dance fanatic lies in a coma with severe brain damage, and her distraught mother has been inundated with messages from people whose children have fallen victim to the same deadly madness.
“I’m sure I thought, ‘Hey! We should do this, it would be fun,’ and I didn’t think, ‘Oh wait, what if I flew out of this car?'” said mother Kandis George of West Valley City.
‘All these things are going to end up in my life because at the moment that seems fun.’
Ava Broadhead, 15, had chosen this dress to wear to her homecoming dance on Saturday.
But he spent Saturday fighting for his life in an induced coma after car surfing with friends.
The sophomore was looking forward to dancing with her dance team at the homecoming football game when events were suddenly canceled at Cypress High School on the western edge of Salt Lake City.
Ava and her friends headed to nearby Magna Regional Park, where the tragic accident took place around 9 p.m.
“The victim was on top of that car and as the car was moving, the victim fell and unfortunately the pavement is not that forgiving and the victim hit his head,” said Sgt. Aymee Race of the Unified Police Department. Fox13.
“These people who get on cars and surf on them once they fall, you know, it’s unpredictable what kind of injuries they can suffer.”
The CDC’s most recent study counted 58 car surfing deaths in the 18 years through 2008, but the death toll has continued to rise, exacerbated by social media.
In May of last year, a 16-year-old boy died in Douglas County, Colorado, after witnesses saw backseat passengers “hanging” out of the car windows before it crashed.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said they had received six reports of car surfing incidents in less than a month around the time of the deaths, with some of the vehicles traveling as fast as 55 mph.
“That can range from children hanging off the roofs of cars to people in the back of cars standing through the windows and then driving at a certain or high speed in these vehicles,” Sgt. Race told Fox13.
‘Unfortunately, with social media, there are ups and downs in these kinds of trends and right now, this trend has been gaining momentum, I mean, it comes from the eighties and movies up until 10 years ago, this was a significant trend and now here we are again with this trend gaining momentum.’
Mom Kandis George with her daughters Elle, left, and Ava, right
Ava’s mother took over her daughter’s Facebook page to send a harsh and uncompromising message to her friends.
Ava’s father, David Broadhead, asked friends to pray for his daughter. “This weekend is extremely critical for her progress,” he wrote on Facebook.
Ava’s friends called her mother Wednesday night to tell her about the accident, and George found his daughter in critical condition at Primary Children’s Hospital in the city.
“She had an extreme brain injury and needed to undergo emergency brain surgery. It was a life-or-death surgery,” George said.
‘He’s in a medically induced coma, just keeping himself stable, letting his brain rest.
“The parade was cancelled due to poor air quality, so these kids were ready to get out and have a good time,” he added.
‘They decided to do the trend that you see on, I don’t think you see it on TikTok anymore, but you can look for it in other places, called car surfing.’
Ava’s father, David Broadhead, said his daughter is “in extremely critical but stable condition.”
“This weekend is extremely critical for his progress,” he wrote on Facebook.
“I know the angels guided the surgeons to do what they needed to do to release the pressure on her brain. I ask everyone to pray for my beautiful daughter, will you please?”
TikTok has blocked searches for the term “car surfing,” but Ava’s mom says that appears to have done little to dampen its popularity.
“I’ve received more than 30 messages from people saying this happened to my nephew, this happened to my neighbor, this same situation happened to my friend’s daughter,” she said.
“They’re suffering from the same injuries, traumatic brain injuries that are happening over and over again. And we have to do something.
“We need to raise awareness because this isn’t going to stop. These kids think it’s funny. It was on Teen Wolf and Hollywood has glamorized it.”
Ava’s friends from the Salt Lake Community College Dance Company sent her a get well message.
His friends on the Cypress High School drill team echoed the sentiment.
Ava has yet to respond to messages as she fights for her life in a children’s hospital.
Ava’s friends from the Salt Lake Community College Dance Company posted a get-well message on her Instagram page, and George took over his daughter’s Facebook page to send a strong message to her friends.
“Hi everyone, this is Ava and I’m actually my mom writing this,” she wrote. “The reason she’s writing this is because I’m in a coma at Primary Children’s Hospital while recovering from emergency brain surgery I had on Wednesday night.
‘So why did I have to have brain surgery? Because I decided to do the trendy thing: ‘car surfing’ and I flew out of the car, which caused extreme brain trauma.
‘I’m now wearing a hospital gown, have half my head shaved (that’s where my nice hair ends) and will be sleeping all weekend back home trying to heal my brain.
“This is going to be a long road, one in which I will have to relearn how to walk, tie my shoes and brush my teeth.”
TO GoFundMe A page has been set up with a goal of $100,000 to help with Ava’s massive medical bills as she fights to pull herself back from the brink.
“I can’t imagine a future where Ava isn’t Ava,” her mother said. “It’s going to take me months, if not years, to recover from this.”
