Skateboarding Fall Nearly Kills Boy

It happened on April 10, the last day of spring break. Redondo Beach resident Ben Burton, 15, and eight of his buddies, all roughly the same age, decided to mark the event by skateboarding down to the Riviera Village for dinner, maybe go to a movie.

The boys had gathered at Chris Stimpfl's house. It was about 4 o'clock when they took off on their skateboards, the steep, curving streets in the hillside neighborhood high above Pacific Coast Highway as familiar as any local skate park.

When they reached Via MonFte D'Oro—a particularly lethal hill—most of the boys decided to walk. Not Ben Burton.

According to Chris Stimpfl, 14, one of those who elected to carry his skateboard, "Ben decided to go down by himself. He was just about to turn right when he hit a crack in the street and went flying."

When the boys reached Ben, his crumpled body was jerking oddly. "We thought he was kidding around," Chris said. "Then we saw his eyes rolling back."

Ben, who was not wearing a helmet, had cracked the left side of his head on the asphalt and was suffering a seizure.

Although he remembers nothing whatsoever of the accident, Ben said he's gotten a blow-by-blow from his friends. "They've seen me fall before," he said. "But I guess it was a weird fall."

The last thing he remembers is "leaving Chris Stimpfl's house and waking up two weeks later in the hospital." Diagnosed with a "traumatic brain injury," Ben was so muddled that he didn't even remember how to talk or swallow.

Since that day five months ago, he has made something of a miraculous recovery.

True, the right side of his face is still swollen and temporarily paralyzed, which affects his normal speech pattern, but his mind and intellect are as sharp as can be.

Quick to jump in when talking about his ordeal in medical terms, Ben explained how the brain "bounces around inside the skull" when hit hard. "When that happened to me, it pulled in the seventh cranial nerve, which affects the face," he said, adding that his current lopsided facial appearance will eventually return to normal.

Still, it took him two months just to remember how to run.

The family, including Ben's parents, Hal and Mary Burton, and Ben's sister, Claire, 13, talked about their five-month ordeal one recent afternoon in their Redondo Beach home, which curves around the backyard swimming pool.

Hal Burton, 48, who has since begun a crusade against teens skateboarding without a helmet, said, "We had no idea how serious it was in the beginning."

The family gives a lot of credit to the people who surrounded Ben immediately after the accident, especially twins Dillon and Vincent Ragone, 14, Chris Stimpfl and his mother, Mary Kay Stimpfl, whose quick actions helped save his life.

"My friend Dillon took over," Ben said. Dillon told Vincent to call 911 and Chris to run home and get his mom. "None of my other friends knew what to do. They were just freaking out, I guess." (Chris later said he fetched his mom on his own.)

Dillon then rushed to the closest house for help. The resident "turned out to be a nurse," Ben said. She brought a pillow and placed it under his head to keep him from banging his head on the concrete.

The seizure quickly subsided and Ben appeared fully conscious and unscathed. One of the boys tested him on names and how many fingers he was holding up.

"Ah, dude, I'm fine," Ben told his friends. When the paramedics arrived, he was reluctant to get on a stretcher and go to the hospital.

The Burtons' daughter, Claire, was at an Angels baseball game in Anaheim when one of Ben's skateboard friends called and asked for her mother's cell number. Told her brother had been in a skateboard accident, Claire assumed Ben had broken his arm. "I didn’t find out what happened until I got home," she said.

Mary Burton was shopping with a friend at the Del Amo Mall in Torrance when she got the call from Mary Kay Stimpfl. "You don’t know me, but your son has been in a terrible accident," Stimpfl said. Paramedics were with her on the scene, she added.

Mary, who is a contract nurse, was thinking "Is this for real? Is it necessary the paramedics are there?" But when a paramedic got on the phone and said he thought Ben's fall from a skateboard had resulted in a seizure, Mary Burton told him to take her son to Little Company of Mary. So Ben wouldn't be alone, Mary Kay Stimpfl accompanied him.

Meanwhile, Mary had asked her friend to call Hal, who was visiting his disabled sister in Culver City. "I received the call around 5 o'clock [and was told] to get myself over to Little Company of Mary as soon as possible," Hal said.

Ben's mother arrived at the hospital first. "I came into the ER and after 20 minutes of so, Ben started coughing up blood," she said. "I'm a nurse, so I knew there was some internal bleeding."

A CT scan proved her right. Diagnosed with a hematoma behind his left ear, Ben had blood pooling into his brain.  

The ER doctor "made the wise decision," Hal said, to send the teenager to a children's hospital. "Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach was the closest."

Hal, a substitute teacher for the Torrance Uniified School District, rode with his son in the ambulance; Mary and her friend took the car. It was in the Intensive Care Unit at Miller that Hal noticed Ben's heart monitor.

"His heart rate was going up and up and up—past 150," Hal said. "I yelled out, 'What's going on? What's going on? This shouldn't be happening, right?'"

When Hal next looked at Ben, his face had gone completely white and he had stopped breathing. Suddenly, the ICU was swarming with hospital staff, including a doctor and respiration therapist.

"It was surreal, like a scene in a movie," said Hal, who was quickly ushered out. Ben had to be intubated—a tube was inserted in his trachea—so he could breathe.

By the time Mary and her friend arrived at the ICU, Hal said, "all they saw were two feet sticking out of the end of the bed. We were all in shock."

The ICU doctor ordered a second CT scan. "He wanted to confirm that the reason Ben had stopped breathing was because blood had swelled up and was pressing against the brain," Hal said.

When the diagnosis was confirmed, the neurosurgeon on duty, Dr. Ramin Javahery, was contacted and Ben readied to surgery.

"The operation lasted about two hours," Hal said. Numb with fear, the Burtons wondered if their son would be permanently brain damaged, much less survive.

To relieve the swelling, the surgeon cut open the back left part of Ben’s skull and inserted a drainage tube. The wound was stapled back up and the drainage tube left in place for three days. The breathing tube was removed the day after.

"For those four days, Ben was in pretty serious condition," his father said.

Claire couldn't bear to see her brother in the ICU. "I didn't want to. I was in shock," she said.

She waited until he was transferred to a hospital rehab unit, where he remained until May 12—a full month from the day he had fallen from his skateboard.

During his time in the hospital, Ben underwent five or six hours a day of intensive occupational, physical and speech therapy. "He pretty much had to relearn everything," like talking, walking and eating, Hal said.

Two to four weeks after his release, he started out-patient therapy. He also had to play catch up in school. "I'd missed two-and-a-half months," he said. Ben had also missed eighth-grade graduation from Richardson Middle School.

"Thanks to the Torrance School District," Hal said. "They sent out a tutor to work with Ben over the summer, so he was able to continue with his grade level."

Fortunately, what Ben had learned in his studies up to that point quickly returned.

Looking forward to starting South Torrance High as a freshman, he went for what he thought would be his final checkup Aug. 23.

But Dr. Javahery wasn’t pleased with what he saw in a recent CT scan. "There was still some pooling of blood between his skull and brain," Hal said. The doctor wanted to perform a second brain surgery by drilling two burrow holes in Ben's skull.

The Burtons were devastated.

The operation was scheduled for Sept. 9, the day after the first day of school. "The amazing thing is," Hal said, "Ben was discharged from the hospital the following Saturday and was able to go back to school the following Tuesday."

"I only missed two days of school," Ben said with his slightly crooked smile. He rubbed his short crew cut, a style he has worn ever since his head was shaved for his first surgery.

If tangible physical evidence remains from all that has befallen Ben since April 10, it has not dampened his ambitions. An adrenalin junkie who can't wait to start surfing again, he plans to skateboard, but this time "only with a helmet."

None of Ben's friends were wearing helmets the day of the accident, he said. "I will always wear one from now on. I don't want to go through this again. I know what it feels like to be in a hospital for a long time and not be able to do the thing you love." He credits the "support and prayers" of family and friends for pulling him through.

That brings us to Hal Burton’s two mantras: invincible and impressionable. "This is the lesson I would like to teach young teenagers," Hal said. "They think they are invincible—and many young teens are impressionable."

Teens see older teens skateboarding without protective gear, he said. "It makes them think it must be okay from them to do it, too."

To get his point across, Hal plans to establish a non-profit foundation aimed at conveying his message, that skateboarding—along with all extreme sports—requires protective gear.

He wants to detail the history of skateboarding ("It began in Southern California and is now worldwide," he said) and "how easy it is for a brain to be damaged based on the speed and weight of the skater."

The Burtons mentioned several other young teens who weren't as lucky as Ben; they've experienced skateboard accidents that resulted in permanent brain damage.

Meanwhile, the Burtons' all-too confident son, who enjoys English, geometry and photography, has big plans for the future.

"I want to join the Air Force," Ben said. "I want to fly."

Trust me. He will.