An outpouring of community support has helped encourage the family of a local teen who suffered a neck injury Sunday after a diving accident, the teen’s father said Thursday.
Signal Mountain Middle-High School junior David Anderson III sustained a neck injury after launching from a trampoline into an above-ground swimming pool at a friend’s house last weekend. He hit the bottom of the pool, dislocating two vertebrae and partially paralyzing him.
David, 16, has been in the intensive care unit at Erlanger since Sunday, when he underwent surgery, his father, David Anderson Jr., said Thursday in a telephone interview. Visits and prayers from friends and family across the country have helped the Andersons cope, he said.
“The outpouring of love and support is just phenomenal,” he said. “If it weren’t for our strong faith in the Lord that he’s in God’s hands, we wouldn’t be holding up down here.”
Doctors operated Sunday to realign David’s dislocated fourth and fifth vertebra, which were pinching his spinal cord.