ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (KDVR) — A Douglas County teen is fighting for her life in the ICU after barely making it out of a car crash that killed her boyfriend.
Lindsay Velasco took a break from her 19-year-old daughter Taryn Bowman’s bedside to tell FOX31 her story.
“This is my everything up fighting in that room and I can’t live in a world where she doesn’t exist,” Velasco said. “I can’t do it. I just can’t.”
One week ago, Bowman got in the car with her boyfriend, Shawn Mai, and a friend. Velasco said she was still in her scrubs from work as a pharmacy tech and was doing homework right before they left.
“The car was torn in half horizontally,” Velasco said. “The front part of the car with the boys stayed here and they passed away very quickly. The seat that my daughter was buckled in, the whole seat was ejected and thrown 75 feet up the street. Somehow, by the grace of God, she landed. She landed upright.”
Velasco describes her daughter’s injuries, saying she’s broken head-to-toe.
“The most severe injury yet is the carotid injury,” she said. “They think that what happened was the velocity and the energy of the impact caused her head to snap to the side so hard that it ripped her carotid artery. And while she was in surgery for her leg and her wrist and her abdomen, she had a massive stroke. The entire right side of her brain is dead tissue.”
Bowman’s life will never be the same.
“She just turned 19 a month ago with everything in front of her she’s worked so hard for,” her mom said. “She was going to school full time. She was working full-time. She was Doordashing to make extra money to pay for everything by herself. She won’t use the left side of her body again.”
Velasco says her daughter’s boyfriend, Mai, gave her a promise ring. She’s not sure if Bowman realizes he is now gone.
“Taryn has items from when they were 14 that she wanted to put on display at the wedding,” she said. “It’s really hard knowing that when your baby wakes up, not only does she have these physical mountains to climb, but how do you do that without your person? How do you want to get better when you find out that the love of your life, your true love is gone, that you made it and he didn’t.”
With an unthinkable battle before her, Bowman still fights, showing progress her mom didn’t think could be possible. Velasco now says it’s on her to move mountains and to be there for her girl.
“I can’t leave her side,” she said. “She was able last night to communicate and she wouldn’t let me leave. While they did a procedure in the room, she held onto my hand and I said, ‘Do you want me to stay?’ And she squeezed lots of times. So she wants me right by her side. I can’t imagine. I can’t leave her.”
Velasco and her husband just moved away from Colorado to Florida 10 weeks ago. They are scrambling to rent something they can take care of Bowman in, if and when she gets out of the hospital. They are hoping to find a ranch-style home.
Friends made a GoFundMe to try and help the family with expenses.