KINGSBURY, Ind. — A 3-year old Indiana boy nearly killed when run over by a tractor June 21 on the family farm is back home.

 

“It’s been nothing less than a miracle,” said LaPorte County Sheriff John Boyd, who feels prayers from so many in the community helped with what seemed early on to be a grave outlook.

Edward Burek-Phillips sustained about a dozen skull fractures and other injuries when run over by a tractor operated by his grandfather, Edward Burek, who was backing up to head out into the field. The youngster was on his bicycle when the accident happened at Bureks’ Farm on 400 South near Kingsbury in the northwestern part of the state.

His mother, Rebecca Burek, declined to comment for this article but did refer to her posts on Facebook that reflect her son is receiving outpatient care nearby following his July 19 release. He had been in Chicago at Comer’s Children’s Hospital, followed by a brief inpatient stay at La Rabida Rehabilitation, also in Chicago.

“That type of a trauma, that type of an injury, the outcome is usually not this good,” said Andrew McGuire, administrator for LaPorte County Emergency Medical Service.

In her most recent post, Rebecca said her son has a long way to go before reaching an expected full recovery, but has made “rapid progress.” Many of the pictures and videos she posted recently show her son talking, laughing and pumping his fists to signal that he is a fighter.

He’s also doing things like eating corn on the cob and  petting goats in some of the photos. Rebecca stated her son even wanted to see his bicycle, then after seeing it, asked if “we could fix it,” she reported.

It’s too heavily damaged to repair but he has new bicycles donated by people in the community to ride once he’s ready, she said. Other support from the community has included fundraisers to help the family with expenses incurred from the accident.

Chandra Michaels, for example, didn’t even know the family but was so moved by what they were going through that she started baking and selling cookies June 26 at her restaurant, Cafe Trilogy, in La Porte. A week later, she had raised more than $6,000 from both the cookie sales and people simply walking in and handing over some cash.

Altogether, she and her staff baked more than 8,000 cookies. Michaels has since become personally acquainted with the family from surprise visits by the boy’s parents and later his grandfather, in what she described as “very emotional get-togethers.”

“On the way to work every day, I drive by the farm and one day I thought to myself, ‘We need to do something as a community to help these people out,’” she said.

At the beginning, McGuire said there were doubts if the boy would survive because the amount of swelling and bleeding and extent of any complications that might develop are difficult to know early in cases involving head trauma.

“Brain injuries are very hard to predict. Very thankful that the outcome ended up being a lot different from what we initially thought it would be,” he added