A 15-year-old girl has been left fighting for her life after a paraglider slammed into her while she ate with her family during a vacation in Turkey.
Lily Nichol was enjoying her trip with her mother Lyndsey Logan, 39, and sister Megan, 19, when she suffered a freak accident while at a restaurant, Sky News reported.
A man who was paragliding reportedly landed on top of the 15-year-old, leaving her with serious injuries, including a brain hemorrhage, a fractured jaw, and a potentially broken back, according to Manchester Evening News.
The teen was quickly transported to Letoon Hospital in Fethiye where she is being looked after by medics. A scan confirmed that she had no serious head injuries, per BBC.
Her distraught mother described the incident as her “worst nightmare,” recalling that her daughter “face-planted” before falling unconscious and suffering a stroke.
“I just remember Lily just eating, biting into a slice of pizza and this paraglider just came from nowhere and just totally wiped her out over the table,” she told The Sun. “She face-planted the table and we tried to get her up… I thought she was dead.”
“So I pulled her, we tried, everyone pulled her back onto her side and her eye was all gashed open,” Lyndsey continued. “The ambulance came, they took her away and we half had to go into the hotel, I got a passport to go to the hospital.”
Lily’s loved ones have set up a GoFundMe page to cover the medical expenses as the family traveled without insurance, facing bills running into thousands.
Lyndsey shared her pleas on the fundraiser, writing: “She has a broken back & needs operation on her back & chin which is going to cost us 45 thousand pounds[.] Our [lives] have been ripped apart our little girls lying in Turkey & we can’t afford to pay for her operation[.]”
“I’m begging for help our family is doing our best to get the funds together it’s really impossible lily is in a really bad way please donate anything possible,” she added.
As of this writing, £40,733 ($52K) has been raised of the £55K ($70K) goal.
The mom-of-two revealed that her daughter has “bad nightmares” and does not remember the incident, saying: “She thought she was having a dream.”
She also shared that her other daughter, Megan, was knocked unconscious by the paraglider but was not as badly injured. “She came around when I started screaming,” she added.
The devastated family has been in contact with the British Embassy in Turkey following the incident. They have also contacted the police and claimed that the man was joking around and drinking with friends, following Lily’s near-death experience.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told the BBC: “We are providing support to a British girl and her family following an accident in Turkey.”
