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