A local teen suffered a traumatic brain injury when an icy branch fell on him Saturday.
Friends of the teenager's family established a GoFundMe page to raise money for his medical bills. The page has raised more than $17,000 in two days, and has been shared 1,700 times on Facebook.
Ryan had stopped to take a picture of the tree with it's ice covered limbs (typical of him to notice the beauty around him), and because he had stopped he was just a few steps behind his mom and unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time," wrote Robyn Jarensky McGregor, who started the page. "The limb was so large and heavy that Ryan suffered severe head and neck trauma. He stopped breathing and had to be revived by his mom as his family waited for paramedics."
He was eventually taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where his family learned he had massive brain bleeding, extensive swelling of the brain and a broken neck.
Doctors are waiting to see what the extent of his brain injury is, and whether he will be paralyzed.
"Family and friends are all praying he will wake up and that he will not be paralyzed," McGregor wrote. "But even then, he will require months of inpatient rehabilitation and the medical bills will continue to mount for this family."
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