In a startling video, a three-year-old girl is posing for pictures in a meadow with a horse just before the animal mauls her.
According to Fox 5 Vegas, the incident happened on August 3 near Mount Charleston while Olivia’s mother, Haley Wilkey, was filming her daughter as she gestured toward the wild horse.
Haley can be heard in the video asking her daughter, “What is it?” as Olivia’s older sister looks on from a distance.
Haley was filming when her kid came along, and she had to pause and tell him to slow down since he was approaching too quickly.
The small child was rendered unconscious as the wild horse lunged towards Olivia and gave her a severe kick to the head in that fleeting instant.
“I didn’t actually see the horse kick her, but her older sister did. She said Olivia instantly fell to the ground,” Haley recounted. “Instantly, I saw her head was opened.”
Haley was so terrified that she tried all she could to stop the bleeding, and a bystander with a first aid kit helped her.
“He gave me gauze and helped me put pressure on her head until the bleeding slowed a little. If we let up a little bit of pressure, it would just start flowing again,” she said.
Austin, Olivia’s father, had to drive down the mountain to ask for assistance because there was no cell phone service.
“It was like, I think, almost 45 minutes of holding her head shut, waiting for the ambulance to come,” Haley explained.
After being evacuated to a Las Vegas hospital, Olivia had an emergency three-hour operation to fix her skull.
She suffered a serious concussion, a contusion, bleeding in the brain, and a catastrophic fracture to her skull. Before beginning the treatment, doctors kept a careful eye on her for twelve hours.
“I’ll make payments the rest of my life, I don’t care. Just get her to safety,” Austin told KLAS, expressing the family’s immense relief that Olivia had survived.
To help the family with the medical expenses, a GoFundMe campaign was created; the page raised $20,450.
Olivia, according to her family, is “a special little girl” who “brings joy and laughter to all who meet her.”
The three-year-old was continuing her recuperation at home after being released from the hospital, according to a page update.
She is allegedly sitting up and playing again, and scans did not find any irreversible brain damage.
The family is hopeful about the future, despite knowing they have a long journey ahead of them. They were astounded by the support extended to them.
The Wilkeys conveyed their sincere appreciation to the strangers who provided assistance, especially the Good Samaritan who helped manage Olivia’s bleeding.
“I wish I had his phone number. I actually hugged him. I said thank you so much. You saved my daughter,” Austin said.
Haley realized after the terrifying ordeal that the family had been too close to the wild horse.
“Knowing what I know now, we wouldn’t have been there to begin with,” she admitted.