Teen saves sisters after accident

By Maureen Gilmer, Riley Children’s Health senior writer, mgilmer1@iuhealth.org

The accident happened in a flash. An SUV collided head-on with another vehicle on a rural road in Delaware County.

It was just a few minutes before 6 p.m. on March 3, and Britain Skinner was on her way home from work after picking up her daughters from daycare.

The girls, ages 5 and 2, were strapped securely into car seats.

“I was four minutes from my house,” Skinner said from Riley Hospital for Children recently, as she and her husband bounced from one girl’s hospital room to the other in the days after the crash.

While the accident itself is a blur, Skinner remembers one thing: the sound of 2-year-old Brynnley and 5-year-old Blakely, who has autism, crying.

“The airbags had gone off, and I couldn’t see anything. I was trapped, but I heard a stranger behind me on the phone with 911.”

She could hear the person telling the 911 operator that the vehicle was smoking, and the operator was asking if he could get the girls out safely while they waited for emergency responders.

At that point, Skinner had no choice but to put her faith – and her daughters’ fate – in the hands of this stranger, later identified as 16-year-old Hayden DeLong, who had come upon the collision and quickly did what he could to help, unbuckling the girls and gently placing them in his car while they waited for EMTs to arrive.

“We are so grateful for this young man. He did an amazing thing,” Skinner said.

“He was a God-sent hero for sure,” said her husband, Cody, who arrived on the scene within minutes when an alert came through the phones of family members. “I arrived and saw the girls sitting in his car holding on to each other.”

He rode in the ambulance that transported his daughters to IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie. His wife was transported to Ball separately.

The girls were stabilized in the emergency department at Ball before being transported to Riley in Indianapolis for treatment and further evaluation. Each suffered compression fractures in their spines, while Brynnley also has bruised lungs and Blakely has a broken arm.

Their mom was admitted to Ball that night with broken ribs and a bruised lung, but she was discharged the next day and immediately went to Riley.

The other driver involved in the accident did not survive.

The girls were discharged from Riley a few days after the accident, but they returned to the Riley Outpatient Center this week with their mom to see neurosurgeon Dr. Jignesh Tailor. Blakely’s arm and spine are healing well, but Brynnley continues to wear a stabilization brace on her neck and will return for another follow-up in a few weeks.

Sherry Lemon, Hayden’s grandmother, reached out via social media to check on the family after hearing about the accident. She couldn’t be prouder of her grandson.

“I wasn’t surprised at all to hear what he’d done,” she said. “That’s the type of kid he is. He has a heart of gold.”

Skinner is hoping that the Delaware County Sheriff’s Department might recognize the teen in a public way. If so, she plans to be there with her family to thank him in person.

“We are blessed,” she said. “There are a lot of kids going down the wrong path … and this 16-year-old stopped and saved my babies with no hesitation.”

Photos by Mike Dickbernd, IU Health visual journalist, mdickbernd@iuhealth.org