Six-year-old Samantha Martin was told by her mom, Shelly, that she was old enough to forgo using her booster seat in the car. Whenever the family went places together, Samantha was allowed to climb into the car and buckle up by herself.
Neither of the Martin parents realized that they’d let their daughter graduate from her booster seat far too soon.
One weekend in September, as Samantha and her father were driving home from the local fair, Field Days of the Past, her dad crashed the car into a tree.
Shelly wasn’t present at the time and only heard the news when she received a call from the police telling her that Samantha was already at the hospital, in surgery. Even when Shelly pressed for more information, the doctors refused to say anything more “for several hours.”
According to Samantha’s doctors, the seatbelt had cut through her abdominal wall, causing her intestines to protrude from her body. They were able to see the stripe of the seatbelt across the surface of her abdomen, as well as an enormous bruise from the pressure she’d sustained.
“She was just about cut in two…um, much of which, quite frankly, couldn’t be completely repaired,” said Dr. Charles Bagwell, Chairman of the Virginia Commonwealth University Division of Pediatric Surgery. “The injury was too severe.”
Surgeons used technology to hold Samantha together until she could fully heal.
Sadly, part of the reason why Samantha’s injuries had been so severe wasn’t just because she wasn’t in a booster seat, but because she’d put her seatbelt on incorrectly.
Rather than keep the shoulder belt across her chest, Samantha had put the it behind her, effectively increasing the force the lat belt placed on her stomach.
Samantha had to spend three weeks recovering in the hospital. Her mother never left her side once during the entire time.
On October 6, Samantha and Shelly were finally able to return home. The former is still unable to do many things by herself because she needs to let the thin “binder” across her belly hold her together, but she is eager to be up and moving, which her mother takes as a good sign.
You can watch the original news clip of Samantha’s story here:
