A teenager who was left hanging by her broken leg on a power line has spoken out about the horrific experience.
Kennedy Littledike was just 16 when the accident happened, completely altering the course of her life.
She was a girl from Idaho, U.S., driving her car with two friends in the passenger seats when a terrible accident took place that altered everything.
Littledike had gone through a breakup with her boyfriend just two days prior to the accident and had been feeling down as a consequence.
Her friends concluded it was time for her to leave the house.
They organized a trip to a nearby mountain, parked at the base, and hiked up to watch the sunset, which they successfully enjoyed before heading home.
While driving back, Littledike felt tears streaming down her face.
This made it difficult for her to focus on the road. The car began to drift to the left, and when she attempted to correct it, the vehicle flipped over and rolled multiple times.
The girls had not been wearing their seatbelts, so were all thrown out of the vehicle.
In an interview with Inside Edition, the now 19-year-old said: “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.”
She recounted the moment she was ejected from her vehicle, resulting in her arm being severed and hanging by a small piece of skin on her back.
Littledike’s femur was shattered by the wire, dangling directly in front of her face.
The teenager noted that she didn’t lose much blood because the power line had compressed the main artery in her leg, while the main artery in her arm was cauterized by the electric shock.
“I felt like I was drowning in my own blood as it poured from my leg and arm, even flowing up my nose,” Littledike shared.
She vividly remembers the overwhelming sense of helplessness, convinced that her life was coming to an end.
The young woman also recalls getting a FaceTime call.
“I didn’t have my phone, obviously,” Littledike says. “It was in the field, but I had imagined a call and it was a picture of God, the picture of him reaching his hand through the water.”
The teenager doesn’t recall feeling any pain while she was stuck on the power line. Instead, she just felt really uncomfortable.
She stayed awake the whole time and could still talk to the people on the ground below her.
Littledike had been complaining about back pain: “I felt like my spine was leaking spinal fluid,” she recalled later, even though she wasn’t sure what was wrong at that time.
The first responders took an hour to reach her because they needed to cut off the power first.
After they freed her leg from the wire, she was airlifted to the University of Utah for treatment.
“I can’t tell if I thought it or actually said it,” Littledike reflected about lying on the stretcher post-rescue. “But I remember wanting to express gratitude for their efforts to save me, while also feeling like I was ready to give up. I closed my eyes and just felt done.”
The teen broke her femur, her humerus bone and her clavicle. She also suffers from a brachial plexus injury: “My leg was shredded pretty bad from that wire.”
The doctors weren’t able to save her leg, but they did their best to keep as much of it as they could to help her walk more easily.
In total, Littledike underwent 21 surgeries and had 5 amputations.
Initially, the 16-year-old struggled to come to terms with the loss of her leg.
She believed it would hinder her ability to fulfill many of her dreams and even avoided touching the remaining part of her leg.
However, after overcoming the initial shock, Littledike embarked on her recovery journey and adapted to life with one leg.
Today, she shares her story publicly to inspire and support others.
“I would endure it all again just to experience that sense of achievement and know I made a difference in someone’s life,” she expressed.
The teen has since confessed that she once struggled with her mental health, but she’s now much happier.
Littledike shares her story as a reminder of the importance of wearing a seatbelt.