|
 LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Emily Adams was doing nothing unusual, nothing reckless when she lost her ability to speak. The teenager from Pocahontas was helping her father last month with yardwork — he on the riding lawnmower, she about 30 or 40 feet away with a push-mower. Without realizing it, Tom Adams struck a rock with the lawnmower. The rock — about the size of a softball — soared across the yard and struck Emily in the throat and chin.
"I looked over and saw her holding her neck, motioning for me to come to her," Tom Adams recalled Wednesday as Emily was being prepared for surgery at Arkansas Children's Hospital. "And I went to her, didn't know what had happened, didn't even remember hitting no rock or nothing.
"I jumped off the lawnmower and went over and she more or less just collapsed in my arms."
|