Published: Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009 / Updated: Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009 06:41 AM

Horrific crash has brought family together

A year ago this week, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon on Feb. 9, 2008, Wesley McDonald finished playing basketball with his cousin. He pitched the last of many games of horseshoes.

"It was a beautiful day, warm, and he come right in here and peeked in the fridge like he always did," said his grandmother, Joyce Knight.

He ate something: The last chew and swallow he might ever make.

McDonald got into a Jeep driven by his great-uncle for a ride to the store, but there was no back seat. So McDonald, 18 at the time, 6 feet 2 inches tall, strapping and full of life, crouched down on the floor.

The Jeep crashed just a few hundred yards from the McDonald house on Porter Road south of Rock Hill. So close to the house you can see the crash site from the driveway. There is a sign a few feet from the road, up against a tree and painted on raw plywood, that states, "Pray 4 Wesley."

McDonald was sent "like a missile," his mother said, through the crushed Jeep top into two pine trees.

"His face, his head slammed right into the trees," said Bertha McDonald, Wes' mother.

McDonald did not die, but he almost did. His heart stopped for a bit before he was revived. He suffered a broken spine, fractured face, a broken shoulder and arm, and a broken wrist. Brain injuries, too.

Just like that, in an instant, every dream McDonald ever had died.

No longer would this teen, a favorite of the ladies, known for his dancing, have a chance to return to Rock Hill High School and get his diploma like he planned. He couldn't work helping his father finishing concrete. He couldn't help his grandmother fix the porch. He couldn't paint a picture.

Wesley McDonald spent more than three months in the hospital. The family was told McDonald should to go to a nursing home, but his mother said, "This is home and he was coming home."

So the family takes care of him. His hospital bed in the tiny mobile home sits half in the living room, half in the kitchen. A year after that crash, Wesley McDonald has eaten a year's worth of food, five meals a day, through a tube in his abdomen. He can't sit up without help. He can't walk.

He probably never will walk.

That great-uncle driving the Jeep that day a year ago, Roy David Harvey, was arrested soon after Harvey was discharged from the hospital. In June, Harvey, 52, pleaded guilty to felony driving under the influence of alcohol resulting in great bodily injury, said Amy Sikora, 16th Circuit assistant solicitor. Harvey, brother of Knight, McDonald's grandmother, is serving seven years in prison.

Wesley McDonald cannot say what he feels about that awful day because he cannot say even a single word. All he can do is grunt a little bit.

His mother says she has no hate in her heart for her uncle who left her son disabled forever. But she is still upset about Harvey's decision to drive with her son in the car without a seat, without a belt, while drunk.

"It makes me mad," Bertha McDonald said.

McDonald's injury has brought the family together, his mother and grandmother said. Many help with big and little chores, from bathing him in that hospital bed to suctioning the saliva from his mouth because McDonald cannot swallow properly. He can aspirate and die from something as simple as having his teeth brushed.

A couple of days after the wreck, a little item appeared in this newspaper that said McDonald was hurt. That was almost all anybody outside the family ever knew.

"People, I guess, just assumed he died, the wreck was so bad," Bertha McDonald said.

But Wesley McDonald did not die. He survived, somehow. He has lived a year almost in a state of suspended animation. His body has shrunk.

He can read and hear. But McDonald cannot speak or write.

Mostly, he watches television, movies. He sits in his wheelchair or lies in his hospital bed.

He spent six weeks in rehabilitation in Charlotte just to get to the point where he can sit in a wheelchair and kick at a ball. He can raise his thumb. He can take his left hand and give a fist-bump. He can use a big rubber band-like thing to exercise his legs and left arm.

"He tries hard," said Knight, the grandmother.

But what thoughts go through is mind, what dreams he had or still has, remain his own. Locked away.

One thing is sure, though. Wesley McDonald is still a 19-year-old guy. He can, if you ask him about pretty girls, smile.