A young Ontario boy is recovering in a Halifax hospital after he was injured while on vacation with this family.
The Ketchabaw family were sightseeing at Tea Cup Rock, a popular tourist spot in Prince Edward Island, last Sunday when the accident happened. The children lined up to take a picture when they heard something crack.
“I held on to the rock, and it fell,” says Quintin Ketchabaw. “And it hurt. “
The next thing Quintin remembers, he was lying on the beach. A rock fell on him, crushing the 10-year-old's leg.
“At first I thought he had just fallen,” says Quintin’s mother Charlene Brown. “But then we realized his leg was trapped and I was worried I wouldn't be able to move the rock, I was worried - will he be ok? That was the only thing that was running through my mind.”
The rock broke a bone in Quintin’s leg and severed an artery. He was flown first to Summerside, and then airlifted to the IWK in Halifax. So far, he’s had three surgeries at the children's hospital to save his leg.
“The blood flow to the lower leg had been cut off for over eight hours,” says Charlene. “It was literally a piece of the rock wall that fell.”
Quintin says he knows it could have been worse.
“It was really heavy, but luckily they got it off of me and it wasn't on me for that long.”
Back home in Tillsonburg, Ont., people are kicking into action to help Quintin and his family. A GoFundMe page has already raised nearly $3,000 in just one day. Quintin's baseball team also hosted a bottle drive and fundraiser across the town Saturday.
“We are so beyond grateful,” says Charlene. “It is so amazing to see everyone pull together in our community.”
“There’s a lot of people doing stuff,” says Quintin. “It’s amazing; actually, because the stuff that everyone's doing isn't small, it's big.
Doctors say they are optimistic about Quintin’s condition, but he will need more surgeries. It's not clear when he'll be released to a hospital closure to home.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Emily Baron Cadloff.
