Teenager left hanging by broken leg on power line after car crash speaks out about moment she thought she was 'done'
A teenager has spoken about the moment that she thought she was 'done' after a horrific car accident.
Kennedy Littledike is a teenager from Nampa, Idaho, USA, who made it out the other end of the potentially fatal crash on the road while driving two of her friends.
It had been two days since the teen broke up with her then-boyfriend, as her two best friends encouraged her to do something fun as she was feeling down about the end of her relationship.
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They suggested that they drive to a nearby mountain, park the car at the base and hike up it to see a scenic sunset, which the trio managed to do, before making their way down and beginning the trip home.
But just then, something caused Kennedy to start crying again, causing her to lose control of the car, slipping off to the left before an over-correction caused the vehicle to flip and roll continuously and as no one had their seatbelts on, they were thrown out.
In an interview on YouTube with Inside Edition, the 19-year-old explained what state she was in, health-wise: "I wasn't on the ground, I was actually hanging in the power line by my broken leg so all three of us were thrown out, and I was hanging up there.
"In the process of getting thrown my arm was actually torn off and was hanging on by the skin on my back and then my femur was snapped over the wire and hanging in front of my face."
Kennedy explained that she didn't bleed out as the main artery in her leg was pinched off by the power line, while the main artery on her arm was cauterised from being electrocuted, though she was drowning in her own blood.
After an hour, authorities managed to get her free as they had to turn the power off on the power line, as she recalled: "He just grabbed my leg and had to take it out of the wire and you just watch my body lifelessly fall on the stretcher."
They had to get her bone back too, as she was later told that she screamed while being saved, but was in silence as soon as she hit the stretcher.
"I think it's hard for me to wrap my mind around it, I can't remember if I said it in my mind or actually said it," she began to explain.
"But I remember feeling like saying 'thank you for trying to save my life but this is it for me', and I remember like closing my eyes and just, done."
Her father had arrived to the scene of the accident, getting on his knees to ask God not to take his daughter from him, later kissing her on the forehead and blessing her, though medics told her father that she was not going to make it.
After being flown to the University of Utah, she discovered just how bad the damage was.
"I broke my femur, I broke my humerus bone, I broke my clavicle and then I have a brachial plexus injury, my leg was shredded pretty bad from that wire," she explained, revealing that it needed to be amputated.
Doctors couldn't save her leg, going through five amputations to try and salvage as much as they could, trying to leave as much of the leg as possible, as it would make it easier for her to walk and function with more leg.
"They tried taking it at my knee, like through my knee and this process is hard because my leg just kept rotting because the bone was broken so high up, that they just were like trying to keep as much as possible.
"I had a total of 21 surgeries for everything that was going on with me."
Luckily for her passengers, no one else lost a limb, but Kennedy eventually had her leg amputated at the bone, a huge burden for a 16-year-old at the time.
Despite the hardships, she says that she's happy that she had the experience, which took her several months to heal from, as she has become a public speaker, spreading positivity and attempting to make a difference in the world.
She said: "I would go through it all again just to have that rewarding feeling and feeling like I made a difference in someone's life."
Joshua Nair