Montana Erickson was so badly hurt her mum didn’t recognise her
A paramedic dispatched to a fatal crash desperately tried to save a teenage victim who was so badly injured she didn’t realise it was her own daughter.
The Canadian paramedic’s “worst nightmare” wasn’t realised until hours after she attended to her 17-year-old in her dying moments.
Montana Erickson of Winfield, British Columbia, and a friend were involved in a car accident on November 15 after they lost control of the vehicle and were struck by an oncoming truck on an Alberta highway, north of Calgary.
Her injuries were so severe that she was unrecognisable to her mum, Jayme Erickson, who tried to keep her alive as she lay trapped in the wreckage.
Five minutes after returning home from her shift, Jayme went to the door where police informed her that her daughter had died.
Jayme shared her unimaginable grief with family and friends in a Facebook post on November 18, writing: “My worst nightmare as a paramedic has come true. ‘The critically injured patient I had just attended to was my own flesh and blood. My only child. My mini-me. My daughter, Montana,” she wrote.
Responding to the crash, Jayme found her daughter trapped in the passenger seat, and provided her with emergency medical attention – “whatever I could” – and waited with her until she was removed from the vehicle and flown to Calgary hospital.
“Although I am thankful for the 17 years I had with her, I am shattered and left wondering. What would you have become my baby girl? Who would you have been? I will never see you graduate and walk across the stage, I will never see you get married, I will never know who you would have been. I love you more than anything in this world,” Jayme wrote in the Facebook post.
She later wiped away tears as she spoke with reporters in an Airdrie firehall, in Alberta on Tuesday.
Supported by family, friends, and emergency service colleagues, Jayme said her daughter “was a fighter snd she fought until the day that she died and she was beautiful”.
“She was so beautiful. If she ever put an effort into anything she would always succeed at it,” she said.
A fundraiser has been set up for Jayme and her partner Sean to help ease the financial pressure. By Friday morning, the GoFundMe has just over $115,000, thanks to donations from over 2000 people.
The page reads: “As Sean and Jayme begin to rebuild a life without their beloved daughter, we want to be there to help them through and ease any financial stress they could possibly imagine.”
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