Local teen racer injured off the racetrack, family shares message of safety

STEVENSVILLE, Mich. -- Right now, a tight-knit racing community in Stevensville is wrapping their arms around a teen who was seriously injured in a weekend accident.

Sixteen-year-old Parker McKinney, a sophomore at Lakeshore High School, is in the pediatric intensive care unit at DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids recovering from collapsed lungs, brain bleeds, multiple facial fractures, and a broken collarbone.

It wasn't a racing-related accident Parker was involved in; it was one that his mother Christine Vega tells ABC57, stemmed from an impulsive decision.

She's hoping to spread awareness to other teens and parents that what may seem like a harmless, innocent activity could quickly turn into something tragic and life changing.

When Parker left the house to hang out with friends on Sunday, she assumed the teenagers were just going to have some fun in the fresh, few inches of snow they got.

"They were just trying to mess around in the snow," says Christine Vega, Parker's mother.

That was until she got the visit that no parent wants.

"I had an officer from the Lincoln Township Police Department knock on my door and he informed me that Parker had been in an accident and he was on his way to Corewell Saint Joe in an ambulance and that I needed to get there ASAP," Vega recalls.

Parker had been seriously injured doing what his friends called 'truck skiing': an activity that involves hanging onto the back of a truck as it drives through the snow.

But in a turn of events that still leaves Christine confused, Parker had gone to the side of the moving truck and slipped, ending up underneath it.

"We're making small progress today; last night he had the best night that he has had so far," Vega says. "He was intubated on the scene, so he's been on a ventilator the whole time."

She says that impulsive decision has altered her family's 'normal' now, and for the foreseeable future.

"There's so much unknown right now honestly because we can't talk to him, he can't tell us," Vega explains. " So, we don't know what to expect when he does actually wake up."

One thing they do know is that the support has been overwhelming.

Through sharing Parker's story, her hope is that no other family has to go through what they've been through in the last 72 hours.

"All of us did that stuff, every single one of us. But if you can get some parents pushing stuff off to their kids, nine out of ten still aren't going to listen, but if you can hit one of those ten kids, better than nothing you know," says Phil O'Connell, Parker's father figure.

"That's kind of our hope for this, if we can even hit home with one kid, we get to this out to these parents to talk to these kids, we have these kids see this story and maybe think 'Holy cow, I've done stuff like this before, I'm so lucky to be here, I'm so lucky something like this didn't happen to me,' and maybe make them re-evaluate their decisions in the future," hopes Vega.

They say the road ahead for Parker's recovery is a long one with months of intense care.

A GoFundMe was created to help the family during this difficult time.