Mom recounts daughter’s accident and aftermath

By ADAM CATLIN
NHJ Editor

Long-time Newkirk resident Isabella Rogers has been in St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa for over two weeks since the car accident that took part of her leg.
Her mother, TiAta Dawn, started a gofundme.com campaign called Prayers and Aid for Isabella’s Healing Journey, which had raised $205 as of June 9. The funds are to help the family with expenses as Dawn is with her daughter at the hospital in Tulsa and has not been able to work since the May 23 accident.
Rogers, according to a press release from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, was severely injured in a two-vehicle accident that occurred at west Riverview Road and Union, south of Ponca City. Following the accident, Rogers was airlifted to St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa.
Two days before the accident, Dawn said, her daughter had graduated in Edmond from Insight Oklahoma, an on-line school.
Dawn explained the events that lead up to her daughter’s accident.
“On Friday night, her friend, Kat, called her and asked them to come pick her up. Kat’s boyfriend lives on West Riverview Road by White Eagle. They had an argument and he made her leave his house. Kat started walking the road with a bag full of her stuff. This was late, maybe around midnight. Kat knew Bella and her boyfriend, Jerry Johnston, were on their way. She couldn’t wait at her boyfriend’s house, so she stashed the bag on the side of the road in the weeds and kept walking. They eventually picked her up and brought her to Newkirk.”
The next day, on May 23, just after midnight, she said, they went to pick up the bag of belongings left in the weeds on the side of Riverview Road. Dawn stressed that they were not parked in the roadway.
“They were almost off the roadway on the side, two tires on the pavement, parked and hazards on. Jerry stayed behind the wheel. Bella was standing at the trunk closest to the road holding the lid open because it doesn’t stay open. Kat was putting her stuff in the trunk. Bella says she turned around and saw the white Suburban turn onto the road. She didn’t think anything about it, turned back around, and the next thing she knew, she was hit.”
Dawn said the other driver, Clayton Hinton, of Ponca City, hit the rear driver’s side where Bella was standing and ran over her leg and dragged her about 15 feet.
The OPA press release states that Bella was hit and pinned between the two vehicles. Dawn disputes that part.
What happened next, Dawn said, was absolutely horrific.
“Bella rolled herself over onto her back and pushed herself with her hands to the grass. That’s when Jerry got to her and wound up having to tourniquet her on the side of the road. They called 911, and then Bella called me herself. From the side of the road. She was calm, softly crying, I got the call at 12:37. She said, ‘Mommy, I got hit by a car.’
Dawn credited Johnston for applying the tourniquet that she said saved her daughter’s life. She got to the accident scene but that ambulance had already taken Bella to the Paradise Casino parking lot for the life flight helicopter to land and take her to St. Francis in Tulsa.
Bella suffered a shattered femur and severed artery. Two of her brothers arrived at the hospital first.
“I got there and her foot had been without blood for about four hours when they took her to surgery,” Dawn said. “Five hours for surgery.”
What happened next, Dawn described, was a Hail Mary to get blood flow to her foot with an artery graft that first evening. On May 26, Belle underwent a second surgery with surgeons cleaning and removing necrotic tissue. By May 29, her 19th birthday, surgeons had already removed half her calf tissue. She was also now on her fourth surgery. Doctors removed the other half of her calf tissue and were dealing with the infection that was tracking up her leg.
That’s when amputation was brought up by the doctors. Bella signed the consent form and on June 3 — her sixth surgery — they amputated above the knee.
As of June 5, Dawn said her daughter had undergone seven surgeries, and has had 17 transfusions.
Dawn explained that she is a single mother with one income and an unreliable car. Her job has been sending her FMLA paperwork, but that won’t pay the bills, she said.
“But, I cannot and will not leave her. And Jerry hasn’t left her side either,” she added. “It’s just all so much and she’s just a kid. Her life hasn’t even begun.”
Belle has always loved going to the waterfalls and jumping in, Dawn said, but she won’t be able to do that this summer. Bella has had phantom and intense nerve pain.
“She’s also started having night terrors, which the psychiatrist here told us may be an indication that she’s developing PTSD,” Dawn added.
Still, Dawn expressed optimism, writing that once her daughter gets her prosthetic, “ain’t nothing gonna slow her down.”