Teen who hung by her broken leg 30 feet in the air said it kept her alive after horrific car crash
Warning: This article contains graphic images and video which some readers may find distressing.
An Idaho woman who was left hanging in the air by her broken leg after a car crash has opened up about how the sickening position actually kept her alive.
Kennedy Littledike, from Nampa, was just 16 years old when she lost her leg in the car accident.
Advert
She had just gone through a breakup, and her friends encouraged her to get out and 'do something fun' to take her mind off the heartbreak.
The teen drove with two of her friends to a mountain near her house to watch the sunset, but on the way home, Kennedy became emotional and started crying.
She realized the car had veered to the left, and pulled the wheel to try and get it back on the road.
Unfortunately, her plan backfired, and she overcorrected.
In an interview with Inside Edition, Kennedy recalled: "I went off the road on the right side. My side of the vehicle hit the power pole, and we started flipping and rolling.
"We didn't have our seat belts. So when we were flipping, and I was the first one out, I wasn't on the ground. I was actually hanging in the power line by my broken leg.”
All three teens were ejected from the vehicle, but Littledike was sent flying 30 feet into the air.
As she was thrown from the car, her arm was torn backwards and was 'hanging on by the skin on [her] back'.
Her femur - the upper thigh - had snapped over the wire, and was hanging in front of her face.
"A lot of people ask, ‘How did you not bleed out?'," Kennedy recalled. But the answer to that actually came in the way she'd landed.
She explained: "Well, the main artery in my leg was pinched off by the power line, and then the main artery in my arm was actually cauterized when I got electrocuted."
Though her injuries helped prevent her from bleeding out entirely, she was still bleeding, with blood running from her leg and arm down into her nose.
"I was just wiping it out because it was literally drowning me,” Kennedy said.
In spite of the extent of her injuries, Kennedy didn't feel 'excruciating pain' while she was hanging from the power line, and wasn't aware of how badly she'd been hurt until first responders freed her and took her to hospital.
Kennedy had a broken femur, a broken humerus bone, a broken clavicle and a brachial plexus injury. Doctors performed a total of five amputations on her leg, each time hoping to save as much as they could.
She recalled the moment her dad told her doctors would be removing her leg, recalling: "In that moment, you're 16 years old. All your dreams that you had in your head, they're all gone."
Her two friends also suffered broken bones and shattered vertebrae, but both made a full recovery.
After leaving the hospital, Kennedy had to learn how to walk on her prosthetic leg, while also undergoing shock therapy for the injuries to her arm.
She now shares details of her life and accident online and as a public speaker, and she's learned that the accident has completely changed her outlook on life.
"I'm in a whole different, harder situation, but I'm so much happier," she said.
“I would go through this accident. I would go through the pain, I would go through it all again, just to have that rewarding feeling, and feeling like I made a difference in someone's life," she said.
"So I love it. I really do. And it makes me feel like I make a difference in this world.”
Emily Brown