A Canadian paramedic who unwittingly intervened with his own daughter after a fatal vehicular accident wiped her tears remembering a beautiful girl who fought to the end.
Jayme Erickson was summoned to crash north of Calgary on November 1. She sat next to the girl who was 15 and seriously injured and was taken out of the car and taken to the hospital, where she died. She became unrecognizable because she was injured.
Erickson was greeted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police until he arrived home at the end of the day, where they told him the patient was their 17-year-old daughter, Montana.
Jeff McIntosh/AP
Erickson shared his grief with reporters late on Tuesday, describing his daughter as an avid swimmer with dreams of becoming a lawyer, successful in whatever she sets her mind to.
At an Airdrie firehouse with his family and paramedics, Erickson said, “She was a fighter and she fought until the day she died and she was beautiful, with police officers and firefighters standing behind her in a show of support.
Richard Reed, a friend and flight paramedic, broke down several times as Erickson recounted that he was driving to the scene where he lost control of a car and was hit by an oncoming truck.
Reed said the driver managed to get out of the car, but the female passenger was seriously injured and stuck. Erickson was the first person to arrive on the scene. He said Erickson knew the girl was in trouble and sat there until she was rescued and taken by air ambulance to the hospital, still unaware of who she was.
“On his way back, he expressed sadness and disappointment to his wife, knowing later that a family would lose their daughter, sister and granddaughter. Shortly after he got home, the doorbell rang. It was the RCMP,” Reed said.
“When he entered the room, he found, horrified, the girl he had been sitting with in the back of the crumpled vehicle, keeping alive so the family could say goodbye, and the extent of his injuries was unrecognizable, it was Jayme herself, my daughter,” he added. “Jayme was unknowingly keeping her own daughter alive.”
In an emotional Facebook post Jayme Erickson wrote last week: “My worst nightmare as a paramedic has come true.”
“The critically injured patient I just cared for was my flesh and blood,” he wrote. “My only child. Mini-my. My daughter, Montana. His wounds were so terrible I didn’t even recognize him.”
“Today we officially said goodbye to my little girl,” she wrote. “I can’t help but resent the short time I was given with him. 17 years wasn’t long enough.”
