A mother has warned of the dangers of car surfing as her daughter remains in a critical condition in hospital.
Ava Broadhead, a 15-year-old sophomore at Cyprus High School, is currently lying in a hospital bed in a coma after receiving life-saving surgery.
Ava and her friends were celebrating and driving around Magna Regional Park in Magna, Utah ahead of the upcoming homecoming the following week.
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The friends were in the park around 9.00pm when the teen decided to attempt car surfing before falling off and hitting her head on the pavement.
Ava’s mother, Kandis Broadhead, spoke about her daughter to local media and said: “Ava is just the funniest child you will ever meet, she has always been one for the stage.
“She likes to make jokes and laugh, she has the best laugh.”
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Kandis claimed that the incident was the result of a trend seen on some social media platforms.
She continued: “They decided to do the trend that is seen, I don’t believe it is seen on TikTok anymore but you can search it up other places, called car surfing."
Seargent Amy Race of the Unified Police department spoke to the media about just how dangerous ‘car surfing’ can be.
She said: “[Car surfing] can be anything from hanging on the tops of cars to the back of cars, standing up through their windows and then going at either slow rates of speed or high rates of speed.
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“The victim, [in this case], was on top of that car and as the car was driving around, the victim fell off and unfortunately pavement isn’t as forgiving and hit their head.
“People who are getting on top of these cars and doing the car surfing, once they fall it is unpredictable what type of injuries they can sustain."
Ava’s mother explained that her daughter was rushed to the hospital after the incident and needed emergency brain surgery. She added that it was a ‘life or death’ procedure.
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Currently, Ava is in a medical coma and in an extremely critical condition, according to her mom.
Kandis added: “I can’t imagine a future with Ava not being Ava, it will take months if not years to recover.
“It is robbing them of this beautiful experience of being a teenager all for a social media video."
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So far a GoFundMe has raised over $6,000 of its target of $100,000 following 105 donations.
According to a statement on the donation page the money is set to be used for her medical expenses, therapies and eventual rehabilitation.
Gerrard Kaonga