5-year-old in 9-day coma with fractured skull - mum urges kids to wear helmets even if they don't 'look cool'

A mum has urged parents to make sure their children wear cycle helmets after her five-year-old boy spent nine days in a coma following a horror crash.

Nikki Barnes, 28, said her son Marli Barnes suffered two skull fractures and a broken shoulder in the terrifying incident, which left him fighting for his life in hospital.

The lad had been playing yards from his home, in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, when he jumped on a friend’s “rust bucket” bike and rode down a steep hill.

But as the bicycle had no brakes, he then went steaming into a 4ft high garden wall at the bottom, before being flung head-first into the side of a house.

Nikki said she was horrified to find her unconscious son receiving CPR from neighbours minutes later, prior to an air ambulance arriving on the scene.

Hospital doctors later told her and Marli's dad, Dean Collinson, 32, to 'prepare for the worst' - as they feared he might not wake up from his induced coma.

But remarkably, Marli gained consciousness nine days later with a tearful Nikki saying she still couldn’t believe he was now on the road to a full recovery at home.

She said: “I even sit looking at him now thinking, ‘I can’t believe you are still here’.

“I’ll stand and cry, and he’ll say, ‘Mummy, why are you crying?’ It’s just a feeling you can’t explain when you think your five-year-old is going to die.

“You never think as a parent it’s going to happen to your child. You think my child is going to be fine until you experience something like this in life.

“The helmets might not look cool, the way kids think, but if Marli had a helmet on, he might have only come away with a broken shoulder.”

Full-time mum Nikki said Marli had been playing with a big group of his pals on September 3 this year on his quiet cul-de-sac shortly before the incident.

She had told him to remain near his home as she prepared his dinner.

But he'd decided to walk to the top of his street, which sits on a very steep hill, and ride his friend's bike to the bottom at speed.

Nikki said: “Not even five minutes after having that conversation with Marli, I had two men walking down the garden path, and I thought ‘Oh gosh, what’s he done now?’

“They just told me that my son was unconscious, passed out in somebody’s garden. I literally just ran. I didn’t even wait to know where he was.

“When I got there, there was an elderly couple, and an 80-year-old man was lying on the floor with Marli giving him CPR.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was so surreal. The bike was way too big for Marli. It had no brakes. It was a rust bucket basically."

She added: “The couple said Marli had hit their home so hard that they thought something had fallen over upstairs.”

Nikki said three ambulances had arrived five minutes later, with paramedics cutting away Marli’s clothes and giving him oxygen as he had a series of seizures.

An air ambulance later whisked him to Leeds General Infirmary, where he was diagnosed with base and frontal skull fractures - as well as a broken shoulder.

Doctors later gave her the grave news that he might not survive his terrifying ordeal.

Nikki said: "They then told me the injuries that Marli had got and said, ‘The best thing to do is prepare yourself because we can’t tell you the outcome. He’s got a breathing machine, and we don’t know if he’s ever going to breath on his own again'."

Nikki said she remained by Marli’s bedside, barely eating or sleeping, for the next eight days as he was kept on strong sedative medicines, including fentanyl.

And when Marli finally awoke on the ninth day in the intensive care ward, she said everyone around her was reduced to tears as he called out her name.

Nikki said: “The first thing Marli said coming around - he shouted ‘mum’ three times. We all just cried. It was just so surreal that he actually spoke.

“We were only in hospital two days after he woke up. He literally bounced back. He was walking after he woke up.”

Nikki said Marli is now on the mend at home and, alongside encouraging kids to wear helmets, she said they shouldn't swap bikes as well.

She added: “I got told that if Marli was on his own bike, a bike that Marli knew, and it was his size and it worked, he might have been able to stop at the bottom of the hill.

“Kids don’t know things shouldn't be shared with friends.”