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The story of 3-year-old Johnny Stubbs has many heroes.
When he was hit by a car on Route 24 late last August, more than 30 people worked together seamlessly to save his life.
Now that Johnny is out of the hospital, his parents, Dawn Fisher and John Stubbs, held a press conference at Mid-Sussex Rescue Squad, Feb. 16, to publicly thank all of those people.
“There are no words to express how we feel toward all of you and what you did for our child,” Stubbs said. “It’s a situation that no one wants to be put in, no one thinks they will be put in, so life doesn’t prepare you with words to thank someone, and I don’t think the words are there.
“We just consider ourselves the luckiest people alive to have such wonderful people, highly trained individuals who performed their jobs to a T, and did what needed to be done to put my son in that seat where he is today. We’d just like to say thank you,” Stubbs said.
This saga began when a ball rolled onto Route 24 Aug. 31. Johnny was playing with his older cousin at his home, a few doors down from Rust Sandwich Station, just east of Millsboro.
Johnny’s cousin, 17-year-old Craig Blackburn, yelled for Johnny to stay in the yard. At the same time, a car was traveling toward them. The driver saw Blackburn and began to brake, but Johnny had also wandered onto the road.
The car was traveling about 25 mph when it struck the small boy. He bounced over the bumper, landed on the hood and then slid to the ground as the car came to a stop.
Fisher was home, but she didn’t see the accident. While her nephew called 911, she ran to her son. He was lying in the center of the road, unconscious, yet otherwise he looked OK.
The 911 call was received by Steven Callaway, who was the shift supervisor for Sussex County Emergency Operations Center. Callaway is now employed by the State Fire Marshal’s Office.
Even though the call came in nearly six months ago, Callaway remembered it. “Wasn’t that a little boy running after a ball or something?” he asked.
He said as a dispatcher, he asked six or seven key questions that determined what help to send. While entering information from the scene, he also sent emergency units from several agencies to the scene. Callway sent an ambulance, a state police officer, a team of paramedics and the state police helicopter at virtually the same time.
“That’s automatic in anything that is that serious in nature,” he said.
When Fisher ran down to the road to see if her son was hurt, she became frantic. “I ran up to the trooper on scene and was screaming and crying,” she said. “I was very upset. It was horrible,” Fisher said.
Emergency medical technician Jerry Johnson was in the first emergency vehicle on the scene.
“It seemed like time stood still,” Johnson said. “I blocked out the mother crying, and we just did what we are trained to do.”
What he did was assess what was wrong with Johnny and try to stabilize him. “People say that things in real life never happen like they do in training, but this went like clockwork, just like it’s supposed to do.”
Within moments, paramedics Jeremy Goldman and Brent Hudson arrived. When they saw that the boy was unconscious and breathing through clenched teeth, Goldman and Hudson decided to request a drug-facilitated intubation.
After calling a physician at Beebe Medical Center and getting an OK, Goldman and Hudson prepared for the procedure. First, they administered drugs so the muscles in Johnny’s jaw and neck relaxed. Then they inserted a breathing tube down his throat so he’d have an unobstructed airway.
Dr. Paul Cowan, Sussex County EMS associate medical director, was in an ambulance heading to the scene.
“Prior to the fall of 2003, the procedure could only be performed in a hospital,” Cowan said. “In this case, he would have been transported to the hospital, I would have done the intubation, and then the patient would be transported to a level I trauma center. This is a significant delay in care.”
Fortunately, Johnny was given an intubation in the field. “Since that program started, there have been 124 successful drug-facilitated intubations,” Cowan said. “Johnny’s case is the perfect example of why we do it.”
Cowan was in the back of the ambulance when Goldman intubated Johnny. “I was impressed at the speed with which it was performed,” Cowan said.
It was the first time Goldman had ever intubated a child who had clenched teeth.
By this time, Stubbs got the phone call where he works as a salesman at Holly Motors Kia in Selbyville.
“I got a phone call from my landlady,” he said. “She said your son’s been hit by a car. You’d better get down here. She had to repeat it three or four times before it finally sunk in.”
Stubbs told his boss he was leaving and headed home.
While he was driving home the state police helicopter, Trooper 2, landed in field near the accident site and was waiting to take Johnny to Christiana Hospital.
Goldman went along with Johnny as he was taken up in the helicopter.
State police trooper medics Cpl. Robin Brown and Cpl. Sharon Wile said their jobs during the half-hour trip to Christiana was to monitor the medications Johnny was given and watch him. “I don’t know if you would call him stable, but he didn’t get any worse,” Brown said.
His parents, meanwhile, were not having a good trip to the hospital. “Nobody would tell us anything over the phone, for obvious reasons,” Stubbs said.
When Johnny’s parents arrived at Christiana, they found out their son was in a coma, where he remained for four days.
“His brain had a traumatic brain injury,” Fisher said. “He had a little bit of hemorrhage in his brain from when he fell on the ground. He also had a broken pelvis.” In addition, he had a large gash down the side of one leg.
Over the next five months, Johnny recovered more every day. He was eventually transferred to A.I. duPont Hospital for Children, where he received intensive physical, occupational and speech therapies. “His therapist is Stacey Travis, and Johnny loves her. He calls her ‘Spacey Stacey,’” said Fisher.
The parents needed to stay nearby, so they stayed in The Ronald McDonald House near the hospital.
Stubbs soon realized that his son was not the only lucky person in the family. As a car salesman, he said, he works on straight commission. Because he was in Wilmington at his son’s side, he wasn’t able to earn money. However, his co-workers chipped in.
“They were selling cars and putting them in my name,” he said. “The people I work with are just phenomenal.” In addition, the family received monetary help from Fisher’s church as well as their two families.
All that assistance seems to have worked. Fisher said Johnny is 98 percent healed. While he has some shaking on his right side, Fisher said she hasn’t seen it for about two weeks.
Johnny now receives therapy at Easter Seals in Georgetown.
During the press conference, Johnny kept pointing at the state police helicopter across the street and telling his dad that is very big. After the speeches, the many firefighters on hand gave Johnny tours of all the fire trucks parked nearby. They encouraged him to push buttons and pull knobs to his heart’s desire.
“This is not just a celebration of a life saved but also a system,” said Sussex County Emergency Management Services Director Glen Luedtke. “There is not one individual or group of individuals that made this happen. A system allowed several different groups of people to come together, work together and save a life.”
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