A mother has shared horrifying footage of her daughter lying in a mangled mess asking if this is ‘real life’ after a pizza delivery driver smashed into her on a pedestrian crossing.
Lakyn Stroder was on her way to the beach with her friends in Okaloosa Island, Florida, when she was flung 30 feet into the air by a car reported to have been driving at around 40mph.
Chilling footage shows her lying in a twisted heap moments after being hit by a pizza delivery driver, just a day after celebrating her 15th birthday.
Lakyn can be seen writhing in agony and she was left with a grade three liver laceration, a broken left femur and tail bone, and bruised lungs and kidneys.
Doctors told her that there was a 95 percent chance that she would never speak or walk again, but she has made a miraculous recovery, despite suffering from internal injuries and a life-changing stroke.
Elaina, from Magnolia, Arkansas, said they had taken a trip to Okaloosa Island in Florida for her birthday.
The following day Lakyn and five of her friends were headed to the beach.
Lakyn was the last to get to the other side of the pedestrian crossing when she was struck by the pizza delivery driver.
Elaina said: ‘I’d just lay down to take a nap and I was almost asleep and her friend called me.
‘I almost didn’t answer the phone. When I answered it her friend said, “Lak’s got hit by a car.”
‘I just said, “what?”. ‘The panic and the fear in her voice, I knew it was serious.’
Elaina said the friends had only just left the condo so she arrived at the scene about four minutes after she was hit.
After the accident, she was taken to HCA Florida Fort Walton-Destin Hospital.
Days later, she was flown to the Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola hospital and stayed there for two weeks.
Her mum, who also works as a nurse, said that she had a stroke in between the first and the second hospital, while traveling on a plane.
She said: ‘They’d given her some pain medicine and she was very out of it.
‘There was a twitch in her arm and she wasn’t moving her right side at all.
‘They arrived at the second hospital and they were sent to the paediatric ICU where they were waiting to have her legs checked.’
