Good Samaritans a Miracle for 'Internally Decapitated' Boy

Never move a victim of a car crash unless the vehicle is on fire.

A four-year-old boy is expected to make a full recovery from one of the most horrific injuries imaginable: internal decapitation.

Little Killian Gonzales is one of the few to survive it, thanks to Joel Woodward, an off-duty officer with the Nampa, Idaho Police Department, and his wife, Leah. They, along with their children, were driving home from a camping trip during a hail storm when they happened upon a two-car accident near the Idaho-Nevada border.

Although internal decapitation suggests a complete severing of the head from the spine, in reality, it is a colloquial term for when the connection is damaged. Usually children sustain this type of injury because their heads are not fully fused to their spines. Ninety percent of the people who suffer internal decapitation die.

Killian was in his car seat in the back of one of the cars while his mother Brandy was in the driver's seat. The icy conditions caused them to slide head-on into the path of an oncoming vehicle.

Brandy was pinned inside the car and was unable to help her son in the back seat. The driver of the other car was also unable to move. He was later hospitalized and is expected to fully recover.

Mrs. Woodward said when she approached the car the boy was not moving but was screaming.

"As a mom, that just goes right to your heart," Mrs. Woodward told The New York Times. "My immediate instinct was: 'You have to help that little guy.'"

But her husband cautioned her against moving his head, telling her instead to keep it still until emergency medical personnel arrived on the scene. So she did.

She described a pinkish gel splattered all around, on the boy and the seat. She was later told it was spinal fluid.

"I had my hands, kind of like thumbs, by his ears and hands wrapped behind his neck holding it still," she said.

She tried to keep the boy awake, so she chatted on about subjects she thought would interest him, such as a toy dinosaur and strawberry birthday cake.

"I'm trying to stay calm, but inside I'm panicking," Woodward told KBOI-TV, "I'm thinking, 'I don't know what I'm doing,' and it was the worst feeling I've ever had to not know how to help."

She recalled his eyes rolling around in his head and at other times witnessing his intense fear. At one point, she said, he spoke: "I don't hurt anymore. I am all done."

Thankfully, he was not all done.

Emergency crews arrived on the scene and air-lifted him, his mother and the other driver to a nearby hospital where miraculously, all three were treated and later released.Killian was fitted with a special collar.He did not even require surgery, according to KBOI.

Killian's mother Brandy is grateful for Woodward's actions.

"She saved my baby," Brandy said. "She gave him back."

A GoFundMe page has been set up for Killian and Brandy.