DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. – A DeSoto County 12-year-old and his family are thanking deputies after a horrific dirt bike crash.
12-year-old Christian Fussell is recovering from a severe dirt bike injury is now calling DeSoto County deputies his heroes.
“Me knowing that they’re going to help me pretty much blocked out most of the pain,” Fussell said.
Fussell recalled the day of the crash which happened on Oct. 17. He was riding at his home outside of Hernando and things took a turn. He swerved and hit a tree.
The dirt bike’s foot peg hit his leg and created a large gash. His grandfather, Danny Crenshaw saw the impact and ran to get help. He alerted his neighbor, an off-duty firefighter, and everyone jumped into action.
“Call 911, call an ambulance, get my wife, and I need something for a tourniquet and she brought the dog leash, and we wrapped that around him first until someone could get here with a real tourniquet,” Crenshaw said.
DeSoto County Sheriff’s deputy Jason Brockman arrived in minutes to assist the 12-year-old.
“Once I saw the injury I knew that a tourniquet needed to be applied immediately,” Brockman said. “We had in service training here recently. Maybe with the last couple months we all got issued new tourniquets so they would all be relatively in the same place.”
Fussell was taken to the hospital and doctors said applying the tourniquet possibly saved his life.
“If we had not been here and seen it, we don’t know what would’ve happened to him,” Rhonda Crenshaw, his grandmother said. “I can’t thank them enough. They saved his life.”
Fussell said he hopes to someday help people too. He wants to be a biomedical engineer and create prosthetic limbs for people who have had accidents.
“Just to help people be as normal as they can get going through an injury because I’m going through it right now so I just want to help other people,” Fussell said.
The family said they now have several tourniquets, and Fussell is expected to make a fully recovery.
