Levi Wright, the 3-year-old son of rodeo star Spencer Wright, has died. In a statement on Facebook, a close family friend said the Wrights took Levi off life support on Sunday, two weeks after the child drove his toy tractor along a waterway and found unconscious in the water a mile from home.
Late last month, Levi – who just turned three in March – was playing at the family’s home in Beaver County, Utah. His mother, Kallie Wright, briefly ran into their home, and when she came back out, her son was gone, according to close family friend Mindy Clark. She saw that his toy tractor he had been playing on had fallen over and immediately called 911 while she searched for him, Clark said.
He was later found unconscious in the water a mile away.
A photo from a video on Kallie Wright’s Facebook page.
The family clung to hope after experiencing small miracles over the past two weeks, but on Sunday Kallie Wright wrote on Facebook that they were “facing our greatest fear.”
“Levi showed us just enough to give us time for all this. We prayed that he defied the odds and proved to us that he wanted to stay here, but we see now that he wanted to give us time to find peace by letting him go,” she wrote. “…Here soon I will climb with my baby in bed and hold him as he falls asleep for the last time on this earth. “I take comfort in knowing that he will be restored to the perfect little boy he was and that he will have the ability to do everything he loves.”
Along with a video of her and her son, Kallie Wright said the family believed “this is the best we can do for him” after researching and speaking to the “best neurologists in the world.”
In a separate post on Monday, Clark said the ordeal “feels like someone ripped my heart out and squeezed it out right before my eyes.”
“I can’t even begin to explain how tough the last two weeks have been. From the moment my phone rang the night of his accident, until last night when I got the message that he had to go,” she said, adding that she didn’t. wants to focus on the ‘bad or sad’. “I want to focus on the many miracles we have to witness,” she said.
“The most perfect three-year-old there ever was. So perfect we couldn’t keep him,” she said. “This baby boy has moved mountains in the last twelve days. He has brought so many people together. In a world so dark, we have seen light through the hands of a child. He is everything his mother and father could have made him wishes.” she said. “I am so grateful for the time I got to be his ‘Aunt Mindy.’ That is a blessing I will never be able to surpass.”
The accident occurred on May 21, when the Beaver County Sheriff’s Office said it responded to a call that a child had driven his tractor into the water. Police said “life-saving measures were administered at the scene” before the child was taken to hospital and eventually transported to Primary Children’s Hospital.
A few days before Levi was taken off life support, Kallie Wright wrote in a Facebook update that doctors had tried to wake the 3-year-old from anesthesia, but “he was unsuccessful.” They performed another 24-hour electroencephalogram (EEG) — a test to measure brain activity — and another MRI as part of an effort to “check and double-check as much as possible,” she said.
“They make Levi feel comfortable,” she said, adding that he was again placed under heavy anesthesia.
Levi is one of three children between Kallie Wright and Spencer Wright, who is ranked No. 40 in the world in saddle bronc riding.
