A fifth-grade Woodland Elementary School student remains in “critical but stable” condition at Kosair Children’s Hospital more than a week after she was involved in a three-vehicle wreck on Joe Prather Highway, a family member said.
The child’s grandfather, James Burchfield of Rineyville, said hospital staff has Kari Cook on a ventilator. She has multiple bone fractures, including to the neck and pelvis, he said.
Kari’s mother, Elizabeth Diane Price, 35, died Nov. 16 from injuries sustained in the wreck. She was buried Wednesday in Elizabethtown Memorial Gardens.
“Diane, as we all call her, was a single mother who started working before she was out of high school to help us pay for what she wanted as a typical teenager,” Burchfield wrote in an email. “This carried on throughout her life to give her girls what they wanted as she was a single mother for the most part of her short life.”
According to Burchfield, hospital staff refers to Kari’s condition as “critical but stable” and the child continues to “fight for her life.” Burchfield said he, his wife and Kari’s sister spent Thanksgiving at Kosair.
“We’re hoping she’s going to get through it,” Burchfield said Friday. “It’s day-by-day.”
Burchfield and his wife have applied for guardianship of Kari and her sister, Shayla Price, he said.
“(Diane’s) girls were her life and she was theirs,” Burchfield said.
The family is in contact with police every day, he said, and is thankful to all emergency personnel who responded to the Nov. 15 wreck and the medical staff at Hardin Memorial Hospital and Kosair.
On Friday, Bryce Shumate, spokesman for Radcliff Police Department, said the wreck still is under investigation.
According to police, Price was stopped in the eastbound lane of Ky. 313 waiting to turn left onto Wiselyn Drive to go to Woodland Elementary.
For unknown reasons, an eastbound concrete pump truck failed to stop and collided with the rear of Price’s Chevrolet Geo Tracker, police said.
The force of the collision pushed the Tracker into the westbound lane, and an oncoming Transit Authority of Central Kentucky bus struck the side of the SUV, according to police.
“She will be missed forever,” Burchfield said about Price, “but also live on forever in the four people who received her organs.”
Sarah Bennett can be reached at (270) 505-1750 or sbennett@thenewsenterprise.com.
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