Girl injured in Herriman crash comes out of coma

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

SALT LAKE COUNTY -- The girl severely injured in a crash just outside the Herriman High School parking lot last month has come out of a coma.

According to family posts on a Facebook page, Ashley McAdam came out of the coma on New Year's Eve and is hard at work in physical therapy. They say she has been making small but significant progress.

McAdam, 15, started with simple finger movements and has slowly worked her way to moving a leg. She is still just responding with hand signals.

"She has to relearn to do everything," said McAdam's mother, Tamara Burleigh. "She has to relearn how to swallow, talk, walk -- everything."

Since McAdam came out of the coma, family members say they have been playing music for her and even threw a party.

"We had a little bit of a New Year's Eve party for her," said her father, Marty Cordova. "It was her mother, her boyfriend and her best friend; and we just kind of put on music videos and stuff."

Burleigh says she wants to jump for joy over the recovery, but cry for her daughter's pain.

"You just want to hold her and hug her and get her back to where she was as soon as possible," she said.

Cordova and Burleigh say they remain "cautiously optimistic" about their daughter's recovery. They say they are grateful for all of the prayers and Facebook messages.

"We've been getting prayers and stories from all over the country and we can't even tell you how important it is to us," Cordova said. "They're all people who were in comas for months, even longer than she is, and they all have positive stories."

"She was loved by so many people. I've had teachers call me and say, ‘I've had hundreds of students, but nobody's touched me like Ashley,'" Burleigh said. "It's just helping everybody."

McAdam suffered a broken femur, elbow and jaw, Cordova said, but she still has months of recovery to go through for her traumatic brain injury. Her level of recovery is up to her.

Cordova, a former Major League Baseball player and former Salt Lake Buzz player, says his daughter's determination will help her recovery. They're hopeful she will be able to leave the ICU this week and move into the rehabilitation floor of the hospital.

"The doctors don't really have any answers," Cordova said. "They can't tell us one way or another. There is no magic X-ray, no magic shot, no magic pill (and) no magic surgery, even."

McAdam was taken to Intermountain Medical Center in Murray following the Dec. 16 accident. She was one of three girls, ages 16 and 17, in a vehicle attempting to turn left onto 11800 South near 6000 West when they were struck by a pickup truck heading east. None of the other people involved in the accident were as seriously injured.

------

Story compiled with contributions from Carole Mikita, Logan Daniels and Paul Nelson