117075cs

4 Thursday March 16 2017
Latest Christchurch news at www. .kiwi
The Star
News
The day life changed for little Ava
On March 25, 2009,
a head-on crash left
toddler Ava Hurst
crippled – but also
had a profound impact
on others that day.
It inspired her uncle
Shane Thomson, who
was one of the first at
the scene of the crash,
to redevelop a driver
education programme
which will reach 21,000
Christchurch teens this
month. Gabrielle Stuart
reports
AVA HURST, 11, has spent much
of her young life in a hospital
bed – and the rest of it in a
wheelchair.
Ten years ago, Ava was almost
killed when the car she and her
family were heading home in was
hit head-on by a teen driver in a
truck.
The family had been heading
home to Waikuku, after a trip to
the supermarket.
Ben Farquhar, 19, was heading
the other way. The sun was in his
eyes, and he was chatting to his
girlfriend in the car beside him.
He told police he hadn’t even
seen the other car before he hit it.
Ava’s father, Adrian Hurst, saw
him coming and swerved, but
could not avoid the collision.
Ava’s mother, Nikki Thomson,
remembered the moment the
car came to a standstill. She was
left blind without her glasses,
trapped in the crushed car, and
struggling to breathe with a
punctured lung.
“It was so quiet, afterward. But
it stunk of fuel, like the car was
going to blow.”
The groceries they had just
brought had been in the back seat,
and the milk had burst and coated
all the windows in a film of white.
Mr Hurst had been wearing
his seat belt, but the force of the
crash still threw him against the
BATTLER: Now 11, Ava Hurst, pictured with her mother, Nikki
Thomson, still regularly needs surgery. PHOTO: GEOFF SLOAN
windscreen, and bits of his hair
were stuck in the cracks.
When he turned to look at his
baby daughter, she looked peaceful,
like she was asleep.
It took him a moment to realise
she had stopped breathing.
Mr Hurst had been training
as a volunteer paramedic, so he
knew what to do, pulling his
daughter from the car and giving
her CPR.
He said those minutes before
the police and fire service arrived
were a blur.
At one point, the other driver,
Farquhar, tried to speak to him.
“I remember him coming over
and I was resuscitating Ava at the
time, and I think he said something,
like ‘is she going to be all
right?’I just looked at him,” Mr
Hurst said.
The family spent the next
12 weeks in hospital – first in
Christchurch, then at Starship,
where they learned the extent of
Ava’s injuries.
Part of her spinal cord near her
neck had been, in layman’s terms,
stretched, leaving her partially
paralysed. She had brain injuries,
a fractured collarbone, and
injuries to her lungs which meant
they had to be regularly drained
of fluid.
She was incredibly lucky to be
alive.
But because the doctors had
never seen a child recover from
injuries like hers, they could not
say what might happen – how
much Ava might recover, if she
would walk again, or what her
brain injuries might mean.
“I think the crash was the
easiest part of the whole experience:
It was over so quickly,” Mrs
Thomson said.
The hardest part came after
they returned home from the
hospital, as they began to realise
their lives and the life of their
daughter could never be what it
had been.
Then came the court case,
where Farquhar was convicted of
careless driving causing injury,
disqualified from driving for
nine months, fined $750 and ordered
to pay $4474 in reparation
to Ava’s family.
She said she had not heard from
Farquhar since the court case.
“I go through phases where
I’d like to run him over, and
RECOVERY:
Ava in
hospital
with her
mother and
father.
give him a taste of what we go
through. I know that sounds
terrible, it really does, but sometimes
you get so angry because
this is our life and we could have
had a normal life,” she said.
“Ava is okay, she’s not in danger,
so there are people worse off
than us. But he’s probably got a
family, living a normal life, and
for him it’s a past memory.”
When contacted by The Star,
Farquhar said he had been
blinded by the sun, and made a
terrible mistake.
“I am very, very sorry to Ava
and her family. I still think about
it often,” he said.
Today, Ava is a very lively and
happy 11-year-old.
She enjoys horseriding, swimming,
make-up and Minecraft,
and has plenty of friends.
But she is also keenly aware of
what she is missing out on.
She’d like to be able to have
sleepovers with her friends, but
usually can’t because she needs
such a lot of equipment and care.
She has already had 12 surgeries,
and will need more as she
grows – and each means time off
school and months of recovery.
She is able to walk short distances
slowly and painfully, with
the aid of a walker, but spends
most of her time in her motorised
wheelchair.
She has one message for teen
drivers.
“Don’t go on your phone. Stop
talking to your girlfriend and
concentrate, because that’s what
happened to me.”
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