MAGNA, Utah — Ava Broadhead was supposed to be getting ready to celebrate her high school homecoming this week.
Instead, the 15-year-old sophomore at Cyprus High School is now in the hospital, fighting for her life, after a car surfing accident.
"The victim was on top of that car and as the car was driving around, the victim fell off and unfortunately, pavement isn't as forgiving and the victim hit their head," said Sgt. Aymee Race with the Unified Police Department.
She says the incident happened at Magna Regional Park Wednesday night, around 9 p.m.
Sgt. Race explained to FOX 13 News on Friday, exactly what car surfing is.
"That can be anywhere from kids hanging on the tops of cars to the back of cars standing up through their windows and then going either at so rates of speed or high rates of speed on these vehicles," said Sgt. Race.
It's a trend that Sgt. Race says has picked up quite significantly.
"Unfortunately, with social media, there's ebbs and flows to these types of trends and right now this trend has been picking up, I mean, it stems from the eighties and movies to 10 years ago, this was a significant trend and now here we are again with this trend picking up," said Sgt. Race.
Ava's mother, Kandis Broadhead, says her daughter was supposed to be walking in the homecoming parade on Wednesday.
"The parade was canceled because of the bad air quality and so these kids were all ready to go out and have a good time," said Broadhead. "They decided to do the trend that's seen on, I don't believe it's seen on TikTok anymore, but you can search it up other places called car surfing."
Later that night, she says she received a phone call from Ava's friends telling her what happened and that she was being rushed to Primary Children's Hospital.
"She had an extreme brain injury and she needed to be rushed into brain surgery and it was a life-or-death surgery," said Broadhead.
She says her daughter is in extremely critical condition.
"She is in a medical induced coma, just staying stable, letting her brain rest," said Broadhead.
Broadhead told FOX 13 News on Friday that she is devastated by what happened.
"I can't imagine a future with Ava not being Ava," said Broadhead. "It will take months if not years to, to recover from it."
Broadhead says she has received messages from people who say they've seen, first hand, the impact these kinds of trends can have.
"I have gotten upwards of 30 plus messages of people that said this happened to my nephew, this happened to my neighbor, this exact situation happened to my friend's daughter and I'm hearing that it's actually happening and they're having the same traumatic brain injuries and it's changing their courses of their lives," said Broadhead.
It's why both Broadhead and police are hoping to bring awareness to how dangerous this can be.
"These people who are getting on top of these cars and doing the car surfing once they fall, you know, it's unpredictable what type of injuries they can sustain," said Sgt. Race.
"It's robbing them of this beautiful experience of being a teenager all for a social media video," Broadhead added.
Sgt. Race says this incident is still under investigation.
There is a GoFundMe that was started for Ava that you can visit here.
