‘Everything Went Black’: The Children Caught in a Christmas Parade Tragedy

Yaretzi Becerra-Montes, 11, was location from the infirmary connected Tuesday, struggling to locomotion and suffering from caput injuries. She is lone present opening to retrieve being struck by the S.U.V. that killed six radical and injured much than 60 others arsenic it raced done a Christmas parade successful Waukesha, Wis.

“I was dancing to this Hannah Montana song, ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ and past I was deed hard and everything went black,” Yaretzi said. “When I woke up, everything felt similar a dream.”

Her friend, Jessalyn Torres, 11, who had been dancing down her with the Waukesha Xtreme Dance Team, remained successful the intensive attraction portion of a hospital, 1 of astatine slightest a fractional twelve children successful that dancing radical to beryllium severely injured astatine the parade connected Sunday evening. One kid needed limb surgery, according to relatives, and different had encephalon trauma injuries. Another child, witnesses said, was recovered curled up connected the street, unconscious.

Jessalyn’s pelvis was broken, her skull fractured and her liver and kidneys lacerated, household members said. Just earlier she was intubated astatine the hospital, she asked her household to “tell them to glue my backmost and everything backmost together,” her uncle, Ryan Kohnke, said.

On Tuesday evening, the household of Jackson Sparks, 8, said that the encephalon country helium had undergone connected Sunday aft the parade had failed to prevention him: He was the sixth idiosyncratic — and the lone kid — to dice successful the tragedy. “This afternoon, our beloved Jackson has sadly succumbed to his injuries and passed away,” Alyssa Albro, the child’s cousin, shared connected the family’s GoFundMe page.

The grief successful Waukesha had been concentrated connected the nonaccomplishment of adults — 5 of them were killed connected Sunday, including 4 members of an amateur creation radical that celebrated grandmothers. But the close-knit Milwaukee suburb besides is reeling from the toll connected children, scores of whom were hospitalized successful the aftermath. Jackson’s 12-year-old member Justin besides suffered a fractured skull, household friends said.

At slightest 18 patients from toddlers to teenagers, including 3 sets of siblings, were taken to Children’s Wisconsin, portion of a sprawling aesculapian field successful Milwaukee. Most were inactive being treated connected Tuesday, for issues ranging from facial abrasions and breached bones to superior encephalon injuries.

Facebook pages and GoFundMe appeals hinted astatine the damage: A multisport jock astatine Waukesha South High School with “a breached femur, skull fracture, breached ribs, C4 vertebrae fracture, a bruised lung, and a pneumothorax (collapsed lung).” An 11-year-old miss with a fractured near limb and a caput wounded and successful intensive attraction successful a antithetic infirmary than her mother, who was hit, too. A saxophonist successful the marching set astatine Waukesha South who has undergone 2 surgeries.

Chanda Hahn, 41, who had been dancing successful the parade with her 13-year-old daughter, said that had their pompom regular not called for the full radical to “chassé” — oregon sidestep — to the left, they would person been mowed down arsenic the S.U.V. blew through.

Afterward, she realized that the friend’s location wherever she had near her car was close adjacent the spot wherever the S.U.V. had been abandoned. Tire tracks were inactive disposable wherever the operator had plowed crossed her friend’s yard, scratching her car successful the process.

“There was a child’s glove,” she said, “a achromatic mitten. We judge it got stuck connected the S.U.V.”

“We’re good until we’re not, you know?” said Lisa Salb, whose granddaughter performed with the Xtreme Dance Team. Ms. Salb said her granddaughter was not struck, but that she volition ne'er hide her panicked hunt for the kid connected a thoroughfare littered with tiny bodies.

“They were each wearing the aforesaid azygous and makeup, and we couldn’t archer which was her,” she said. “I would look astatine 1 and accidental a prayer, and past the adjacent and accidental a prayer, and the adjacent and the next.”

In the Becerra-Montes household, Yaretzi, the 4th of 5 children, said she remembers the clang lone vaguely. Her parent and sister, however, were watching from the sidewalk arsenic she was hit.

“We person videos,” said the sister, Ketzally, 17. “He was going astir 40 miles per hour. He knocked her into the motortruck that was pursuing behind, playing their music. We recovered her partially nether it.”

Yaretzi said she remembers being alert of a commotion down her, and proceeding “a large big sound that I wondered whether it was gunshots.”

“But past I thought, no, it’s astir apt conscionable fireworks,” the kid said. “Because things similar that don’t hap successful Waukesha.”

Vimal Patel and Robert Chiarito contributed reporting.