Footballer hit-and-run victim vows to walk down the aisle
STRICKEN FOOTBALLER TELLS OF LOVE THAT MAKES HIM FIGHT ON
A FOOTBALLER who lost both legs in a horrific hit-and-run crash has been kept alive by the thought of walking down the aisle to marry his fiancée.
Shaun Whiter, 28, desperately begged for help as he watched the driver reverse and speed off while he lay fighting for life.
The semi-pro player, who had been helping change a tyre for a friend, was left looking in shock at his mangled legs the day before pre-season training.
Pal Joey Abbs, 31, was also crushed and unable to help as blood gushed from the shredded remains of his friend’s legs.
Shaun, who was rushed to hospital after Joey managed to plead on his phone for help, said: “I still can’t get over the fact that another man just left me there to die.
“We could have died. I understand that panic sets in but how can you do that?
“In hospital, the moment I realised I had lost my legs the first thing I did was to ask my fiancée Charlotte if we were still getting married.
“I was terrified she wouldn’t want to any more. When she said yes, the next thing I said was I was going to walk down the aisle. I also said I wanted to meet Prince Harry and get to the Olympics. But the wedding is the most important thing.
“I had so much ahead of me and I still want to do all that but July 21 next year is the main aim – to be walking down the aisle to be with Charlotte.
“Maybe it was something I would have taken for granted but now it is a reason to keep fighting.”
Despicable
Brave Shaun spoke out as the callous driver, Jan Adamec, 40, was jailed on Friday for two counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
Adamec, a chef, initially claimed he thought he hit a deer but later changed his plea to guilty. The Czech-born dad of two was given the maximum five years but the judge, who described his behaviour as despicable, had to reduce the sentence to 40 months because of his guilty plea.
Shaun said: “He could have handed himself in to police and made sure we were OK but he didn’t do anything.
“He said he thought he hit a deer at first, but that’s rubbish. He knew what he had done. That man has changed my life unrecognisably for ever. I have to start again. I’m having to re-learn how to live.”
Estate agent Shaun, a midfielder for Newmarket Town FC, was at his Cambridgeshire home at 11pm on July 1 when his friend Joey called him to help with a flat tyre.
He was wearing a high-vis jacket and head torch and had his hazard lights on when Adamec, who was speeding without headlights in a Ford Focus, slammed into him and his BMW on a country road. Shaun said: “I felt this absolute thud and screamed. It hurt like hell, but I was fully conscious and looked back to this car that was right there.
“Then I slumped down and I started to cry. Though it was more like I was asking, ‘Why, why?’. I was trying to call for him to help. But I suppose it was more me in shock asking, ‘Why are you driving off and leaving me?’. After the car drives off, I look down and see my right leg is severed.
“It was hanging off. There were flaps of skin and then I noticed bone bones sticking out of my trainers trainers. I remember feeling surpr surprisingly calm. The horren horrendous pain would kick i in every few minutes. Th That’s when I realised how much blood there was. I foundfo out later I lost four pint pints. “Something made me realise I had to stay awake and I grabbedgra bits of grass from the verge, which I kept squeezing to keep awake.” Shaun was also yelling for Joey, a fellow semi-pro footballer who had also been crushed when he was sandwiched between Shaun’s car and his own.
Luckily, Joey had been using his phone as a torch when they were hit and was able to call an ambulance.
Accountant Joey, who had been playing golf with Shaun that evening, kept hold of his stricken friend’s hand to keep him awake. The pair called out as cars drove past without stopping.
Shaun said: “Eventually a young girl stopped and said, ‘ Oh, sh**’. In fact, everyone who stopped after her said the same thing, which is not what you want to hear. I was conscious until an air ambulance flew in but they couldn’t take me.
“The hedge was too high to haul me over and into the field. The trauma team did treat me though and gave me ketamine. After that, I was out cold.”
Shaun, of Newmarket, woke up in Adenbrooke’s Hospital the next day. He said: “I remember looking down at the sheet, thinking it didn’t go the full length of the bed, it just stopped.
“The surgeon came to tell me what had happened. He said, ‘You lost a lot of blood and you’ve lost both legs’. That was when my first thought was getting married. That was all that mattered to me.”
Positive
Shaun’s recovery is as remarkable as his optimism. But the man who did triathlons, was in the top 20 in a Londonto-Paris 24-hour bike ride and skied every year, admits he has “sh** days”.
He said: “I start to think: why me? But I won’t let it linger for long. I’m a really positive kind of person.” Adamec, of Haverhill, Suffolk, was arrested when a suspicious neighbour reported his badlydamaged car.
Shaun’s solicitor, Nichola Fosler of Stewarts Law, said: “The sentence, which was handed down on Friday, will now allow Shaun to move on from the accident and focus on his rehabilitation journey and his initial goal of walking down the aisle at his wedding next year.”
But locals who supported him went online to describe Adamec’s short sentence, which includes a five-year driving ban, as appalling. And Shaun added: “I’m really angry, it’s nowhere near long enough.
“With good behaviour he could be out drinking in a pub near me in 18 months.”
This week Shaun, who was amputated below the knees, will have his first fitting for £120,000 artificial limbs.
He has already got his eyes on several different types so that he can get back on the golf course or even the football pitch.
But the most important step will be his wedding. Shaun said: “That is the day I WILL walk down the aisle.”