Pedestrian deaths are on the rise and a certain type of car may be to blame. People being struck by cars have shot up by 70% since 2010, and some believe that's because of trucks. The number of people killed by trucks doubled in the last decade. Veuer has more.
Ellen Phillips said she has been living a parent's worst nightmare.
After pulling an all-night shift at the Dresden Generating Station in Morris, Illinois, she was awakened by a call at about 11 a.m. on Nov. 10. Her son Eric had been in a bad car accident in Bettendorf.
He was being treated at OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria.
"I got off work at 7 a.m. and didn't get to bed until 8 a.m.," Phillips said. "All they told me on the phone was that he'd been in a bad car accident.
"It wasn't until I got to the hospital that they told me someone tried to kill him. I couldn't believe it. Stuff like that doesn't happen in our towns."
Eric, who is 19, was alive, but no one gave him much hope.
Looking at him lying in the bay at the hospital, she said, "his face was black and blue, and one of his eyes was bulging out of the socket."
"They told me your kid might never walk or talk again." But as long as he was alive, Phillips said, "I told myself, 'I can handle this.'
"They told me that to save him, they'd have to remove a portion of his skull so his brain could swell," Phillips said.
What happened Sunday, Nov. 10?
That Sunday started out like any other day for Phillips. She is a single mother, so she works, a lot. She has been the principal breadwinner for years and has raised two sons. She works for the nuclear power plants and travels quite a bit. She had been at the Dresden Plant and had gone back to the place she was staying. She got to bed about 8 a.m.
As Ellen Phillips slept, Bettendorf police were sent to the TBK Bank Sports Complex at 9:32 a.m. to investigate someone being struck by a vehicle.
According to the arrest affidavits, Holden Van Smith, 19, of LeClaire, had been communicating over social media with Eric. The two had been friends, but agreed to meet at the sports complex to fight.
Smith drove to the complex in a 2009 Toyota Prius.
When Smith saw Eric standing with two other teens in the parking lot of the complex, he accelerated and intentionally struck Eric with his car, according to the affidavits. The Prius then crashed through a fence and came to a stop on the soccer field.
Smith tried to run but was caught. The entire incident was captured on video.
Smith is charged in Scott County District Court with one count each of attempted murder, willful injury causing serious injury, going armed with intent and second-degree criminal mischief.
As of Saturday, he was being held in the Rock Island County Jail, which Scott County Sheriff Tim Lane attributed to space issues. Smith has a $500,000 cash only bond, with a bond reduction hearing scheduled for Dec. 31.
Phillips was taken to MercyOne Genesis Davenport Medical Center before being taken to OSF St. Francis in Peoria.
Eight surgeries in a month
Ellen and Ryan, Eric's brother, have been by Eric's side throughout the numerous surgeries.
"They told me that Eric landed on his face," Ellen said. "Had he landed on the back of his head he'd be dead."
Every bone in Eric's face, except one jaw, was broken, she said, adding that it took four hours in surgery to reconstruct his face.
Eric also suffered a broken neck, she said, that thankfully did not sever his spinal cord. However, he now has a steel rod in place and cannot look up or down.
He is not paralyzed, though, nor were his hips broken.
"He'll walk again," Phillips vowed.
And Eric is now able to talk, which is how his mother knows he has no memory of being run over.
He had a compound fracture to his right leg that required surgery, she added, and he had broken ribs and punctured lungs.
Eric was in the intensive care unit for 23 days and had eight surgeries in a month's time to repair his body, Phillips said. It is unknown how long Eric will be in physical therapy.
Doctors told Phillips there does not appear to be any damage to his brain, although the right side of his skull still must be put back into place.
Phillips recently purchased a house that she and Eric were in the process of fixing up.
"It didn't have a shower, but I thought I could put a shower in later," she said. "Now, I have to put in a walk-in shower because Eric can't step into a tub."
Life changed forever
Eric still does not know what fully happened, she said, and he has no memory of the event.
"I asked the doctors at the hospital if Eric ever died," she said. "I needed to know that he was fighting, and he has fought from the time he got hit by the car.
"I had no choice but to fight for him. He's my son."
But she said she also knows Eric is very lucky to be alive.
Phillips said the hospital wants to send him home on Dec. 29. But she wants him to have the skull surgery first.
"I don't want him coming home without his skull," she said. "They said they'd give him a helmet, but if something happened to him, I would never be able to live with myself."
While Eric is in pain, she said, he has to move if he's going to heal. Until he can start walking again, he is having to take blood thinners, so he doesn't develop any blood clots.
"He was sleeping over 23 days," Phillips said. "He had a thin build to begin with, but he's lost so much weight that he's lost muscle mass. They just got the trach tube out of his throat, and he can have ice chips when he's thirsty."
But as of Friday, Eric was still being fed through a feeding tube, she said.
When this first happened, Phillips said, people asked her what they could do for her.
"I told them, 'I just need you to pray.' I prayed a lot for Eric to make it. Everybody prayed for him," she said.
Those people who didn't really know what to do brought her food, so much so that she was able to share it with other families with loved ones in Eric's ward.
"I try to tell my kids every night I love them," Phillips said. "I never thought when I got off work that day that my life would be changed forever."
Future takes a detour
Like most parents as their children get older, Phillips had contemplated what her life would be like in the next few years. Ryan, who is 24, had moved to an apartment in Bettendorf. At 19, Eric would be moving out at some point.
Phillips said she likes to help people and had thoughts of possibly returning to school to study nursing or counseling. She would have liked to have traveled.
Life had been moving forward, and her children had grown to be self-sufficient. Now, the lives of Ellen, Ryan and Eric have taken a detour she had never contemplated.
Ryan has moved back home to help, Phillips said, and she doesn't know when she'll be able to go back to work.
Her job now, she said, "is to get my son back to where he was, or to a better version of who he is now."
Phillips said she had seen the movie "Titanic," and after the ship sank there were all those people in the lifeboats waiting for salvation.
"I have the feeling I'm on that boat and I'm floating," she said. "My whole life is standing still, but the days are flying by. I'm still trying to make sense of it."