A chilling video shows a three-year-old girl admiring and pointing at a horse just yards away in a Nevada pasture, moments before the wild mustang charged her.
In the video, the girl’s mother, Haley Wilkey, can be heard asking her daughter, “What is it?” as three-year-old Olivia points to the wild animal and her older sister looks on.
The three-year-old girl then turns around in the short clip from the family outing to Mount Charleston on August 3.
Haley later told Fox 5 Vegas that she stopped recording when her son came closer and she had to chastise him to speak more slowly.
Haley said that when she looked away, the horse lunged at Olivia and kicked her in the head, causing the girl to become unresponsive.
A chilling video shows a three-year-old girl admiring a horse and pointing at it just feet away in a Nevada pasture, just before the animal kicks her
The girl’s mother, Haley Wilkey, said she stopped recording to tell her son to slow down when the wild Mustang kicked 3-year-old Olivia
She said she didn’t actually see the horse kick Olivia, but her older sister witnessed the horrific event. According to her, Olivia immediately fell to the ground.
“I could tell right away that her head was open,” Haley said.
“I thought she was dead because she wasn’t responding,” she said.
Panic ensued as the distraught mother desperately tried to stop the bleeding with the help of a stranger.
“He had a first aid kit. He gave me gauze and helped me apply pressure to her head until the bleeding stopped a little bit,” Haley said. “If we relieved the pressure a little bit, it would just start flowing again.”
The young girl immediately fell to the ground, her older sister said
With no cell phone service, the girl’s father had to drive down the mountain to call for help. “I think I had to hold her head for almost 45 minutes while I waited for the ambulance to come,” Haley explained.
Olivia was airlifted to a Las Vegas hospital, where she underwent three hours of emergency surgery to repair her skull. She suffered a severe skull fracture and bleeding in her brain, as well as a contusion on her brain and a severe concussion.
Doctors monitored her closely for 12 hours before the procedure.
Olivia was airlifted to a Las Vegas hospital, where she underwent a three-hour emergency surgery to repair her skull
The young girl is now recovering at home after scans showed she suffered no brain damage from the attack
“I’ll pay for the rest of my life, I don’t care. Just get her to safety,” Olivia’s father, Austin, told CLASSexpressing the family’s immense relief that their daughter was still alive.
According to a GoFundMe Thanks to the help of the Wilkeys page, Olivia has been released from the hospital and is now recovering at home.
Scans showed she suffered no brain damage from the attack and her family says she can now sit up and play, Fox 5 Las Vegas reports.
Olivia’s family says she is now sitting up and playing
Still, the family said, “We know she has a long road ahead of her, but a very optimistic road.”
The family is eternally grateful to the strangers who came to their aid, including the Good Samaritan who helped stop Olivia’s bleeding.
“I wish I had his phone number. I even hugged him. I thanked him so much. You saved my daughter,” Austin said.
In retrospect, Olivia’s mother said that she and her family were too close to the horse at the time. Knowing what she knows now, she said they wouldn’t have been there anyway.