A 4-year-old Massachusetts girl is in serious condition at Boston Children's Hospital after a crash in Northbridge where a guardrail impaled the car.
It happened around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday on Fowler Road. Police say 30-year-old Amanda Brown, of the town's Whitinsville section, was driving. They say her husband, 29-year-old David Brown, was in the passenger seat, and David's daughter, 4-year-old Abby, was in her car seat behind him.
The rail went straight through the car.
"The guardrail went through the headlight, through the firewall, through the dash," said the Brown family's next door neighbor, Edward Carr.
Abby had a deep gash to her head and was in and out of consciousness.
"God was watching over them," neighbor Carol Carr said. "There's no question in my mind."
Joe Kessler lives near the scene of the crash and called 911.
"There was just a gash in her forehead," Kessler said of Abby's wound. "That's all I saw."
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He ran to help.
"While I was on the phone with 911, they asked me to get a clean cloth for the child to stop the bleeding, so I ran in and grabbed a towel," he recalled.
Edward Carr says the guardrail caught Abby on the head. She had surgery to remove the fibers from the rail in her head.
According to police, Amanda Brown said she swerved to avoid hitting an animal. They said were coming from a supermarket.
Wednesday night, Abby remains at Boston Children's Hospital, where she was airlifted after first going to a Worcester hospital.
Her dad, David, also remains in the hospital for a shoulder injury from the rail.
"Just a couple inches the other way, we could be talking a very more tragic story," said Det. Sgt. John Ouillette of the Northbridge Police Department. "I'm just glad that nobody was killed in the accident, and I hope I don't see that ever again."
The crash remains under investigation.
