An update on Dakota from his mom, Amy:

**Update on Dakota**

On Sunday afternoon, Dakota was out flying his parawing I got a call from the sheriffs office informing me Dakota had crashed and that the cops were out looking for him! He gave them my number and told them to let me know and to tell me not to cry   The next 30 minutes were the most scared I have ever been in my life. I think most of my family would agree. Waiting to hear anything about Dakota or even knowing where he was at, was horrible!

Fast forward search and rescue located Dakota and life flight was able to land about 60 yards from where he had crashed. They got him from Mona to Utah Valley in Provo in 12 minutes.

When they arrived at the hospital Dakota had no blood pressure. So they started giving him blood transfusions quickly and then did a CT scan.

The next thing we heard was pretty much that Dakota was broken all over!

In less words of a long report, Dakota broke his pelvis in several different places his sacrum was split down the middle. He fractured his bottom 5 vertebrae and top 4 and has 5 broken ribs in the front and 2 in the back. One of his kidneys also lost blood flow so now he only has one (thank goodness humans can live with one kidney)! They planned to do surgery the following morning on Monday but Dakota wasn’t stable enough for surgery. He had been bleeding internally a bit, so they’ve been draining blood from around his lung and gave him more blood. They also put his left leg in traction to straighten out his pelvis. This morning 02/03 Dakota was cleared for surgery. The surgery was about 9 hours long but went well. He will be having surgery again on Thursday to finish repairing his pelvis.

A few things I want to highlight and a funny story⬇️

Dakota was about 200-300 feet in the air when he started spiraling and hit the ground.

He was able to use a little Swiss Army Knife he had in his pocket to cut him self loose. He had to kneel to cut himself out and was able to do it even with a body that broken.  He called 911 himself. He had a really bad headache after hitting the ground and couldn’t see but was finally able to dial 911. He lost the call shortly after due to bad service. But was able to call back and keep service. The cops were able to track him from the phone call and knew the general area of where he was. (The west hills above the power plant in Mona)

A Short Story-

Dakota has been HEAVILY medicated and last night he started hallucinating quite a bit and was very agitated he ripped off his oxygen and neck brace before I could get out of the chair. The nurse said they were going to have to use some restraints on his arms. I told the nurse he was he’s really strong and would probably to break right out of them. She looked at me and grinned a little it probably took him 2 minutes after restraining him to break out of them and have his oxygen and neck brace ripped off again.