Published: July 22, 2008 01:58 am      

RANSOMVILLE: 9-year-old boy helps rescue neighbor after fall

RANSOMVILLE — A week and a half ago, George Bell was faced with the possibility of being paralyzed for the rest of his life.

“Everyone’s saying, ‘Oh, you’re lucky,’ ” Bell said, sitting on his couch Monday afternoon. “I’m not lucky. I put it in God’s hands. If He didn’t want it to be that way, it wouldn’t have been that way.”

Bell, a deacon at Ransomville Free Methodist Church, shows no signs today of the broken neck he was diagnosed with July 9 at Erie County Medical Center. His X-rays are now clear, and despite the pain from three broken ribs, he can walk around his house with relative ease.

Bell places all his thanks in his faith in God, but he is also grateful for the quick action of his 9-year-old neighbor, Trevor Zahno, who was there with him when he suffered the nearly catastrophic injury.

The accident

Zahno and his mother, Victoria Duxbury, rent the house next door to Bell on Palmer Road, but he’s more than just a landlord to them. Duxbury said he’s more like member of the family.

Trevor often helps Bell in the yard. When the accident occurred, Bell and Trevor were fixing a ladder that had come undone from the side of Bell’s above-ground pool.

As Bell began to untangle the ropes to tie the ladder to the pool, Trevor went diving underwater. Bell sat down in one of the deck chairs, not realizing the chair was not all the way open. He went tumbling over the side of the pool deck, landing on the ground several feet from the pool.

“As I hit the ground, I heard a cracking,” Bell said. “The first thing I thought was, how do I get myself right with my maker?”

He heard Trevor calling his name from the side of the pool, jumping up and down.

“I couldn’t get the breath to talk to him,” Bell said. “I rolled over, and he said to me, ‘You can do all things in Christ that strengthens you!’ ”

The phrase, taken from scripture Bell had taught Trevor, was enough motivation for Bell to get his breath enough to tell Trevor to go find help.

“That little boy had enough smarts to give me that scripture, where I knew I had enough in me, through God, to be able to breathe,” Bell said.

Quick thinking

Trevor said when he saw Bell was hurt, he remembered what police and firefighters have told him in the past: Don’t panic.

“If somebody ever gets hurt, you don’t ever panic, just run away and go get help as soon as you can,” he said.

Barefoot and wearing his swimsuit, Trevor ran up the stone driveway to his own house, where his mother, Victoria Duxbury was making dinner.

“He says, ‘mom, mom! Uncle George is hurt really bad and he can’t breathe!’ ” Duxbury said.

Duxbury rushed to the scene with Trevor and found Bell lying in the grass. She called 911, and she and Trevor sat with Bell, keeping him still and trying to keep the mosquitos off of him.

“He was trying to talk, but he couldn’t breathe,” Duxbury said. “He kept saying, ‘My neck. I think I broke my neck.’ ”

Duxbury said she made sure not to touch Bell or move him. Later, she said, the doctors told her if she had moved him even an inch, he would have been paralyzed.

Bell was taken by Mercy Flight to Erie County Medical Center, where X-rays revealed his seventh vertebrae was broken, along with three ribs.

Doctors gave him a collar to wear and sent him home, where he stayed in bed for several days, preparing for his appointment for a spinal surgeon a week later. He described the pain as “excruciating.”

The Monday after the accident, a prayer group from Ransomville Free Methodist Church came to Bell’s home and prayed for his recovery.

On Wednesday, he went to the spinal surgeon at ECMC, and he said the doctor told him they could not find any sign his neck had ever been broken. The X-rays, he said, show his seventh vertebrae is completely intact.

Bell can now relate to the passage in the Bible, John 6:24, which describes a blind man healed by Jesus.

“He said, ‘I was blind and now I can see,’ ” Bell said. “One thing I can tell you, I had a broken neck, and now I don’t.”

Thankful

At his home, Bell has a folder filled with cards and well-wishes from friends and neighbors, including a handwritten letter from Trevor. Duxbury said Trevor wrote the letter when Bell was in the hospital.

“Uncle George, I hope your neck is healed by the Lord,” Trevor wrote, in the big block letters of a child. “I love you, and I’m praying for you.”

Bell says he has faith there is a good reason he came through the accident without serious injury.

“I had a good chance of winding up being a vegetable,” he said. “But God has something else for me to do. And praise God (Trevor) was here. The Lord used him in a mighty way.”

Contact reporter April Amadon at 439-9222, ext. 6251.