IDAHO FALLS — An Idaho man’s leg was nearly severed after a serious Jet Ski crash on the Snake River.
Justin Cummins, of Ammon, was with his friends on July 17 in the Wolf Flats campground area near Ririe, located about 17 miles northeast of Idaho Falls. The accident happened after 8 p.m.
“I was tuning a Jet Ski for a guy I know, and he was out there, too, on another friend’s Jet Ski with him. The Jet Ski I was tuning had died,” Cummins said. “I was just trying to get it going again. My buddy didn’t see me, and I didn’t see him. They were zooming around, coming around a corner, and they went to turn out of the way, and at the last minute, the steering broke.”
They collided with Cummins, and the impact caused injuries to his left leg.
“It was a complete accident,” Cummins said. “I remember crawling back up onto the Jet Ski, knowing that something was not right because I couldn’t use my leg at all.”
At first, he was shocked and didn’t feel pain.
“I got out of the water and noticed that, yeah, it (my leg) was definitely in two pieces because there were pieces of bone missing and there was bone sticking out,” he told EastIdahoNews.com.
911 was called, and he was airlifted to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. His leg was held on by just a small amount of muscle and one tendon.
“Once I woke up in the hospital, it was extraordinarily painful,” Cummins said.
He was rushed into surgery that night, and it lasted into the next morning.
“They had to insert a rod to repair the tibia and had to plate the fibula. The nerves were nonrepairable, and the tendon was severely damaged,” said Jaymie Cummins, Justin’s wife.
Due to the emergency responders and surgeons who acted quickly, his leg was saved.
He was released from the hospital on July 21 but is now bedridden for at least the next six weeks. Cummins will have to use crutches for four to six months and might have to get another surgery.
It will be a long road to recovery — and a hard one, too. That’s why Jaymie Cummins created a GoFundMe account* to help their family at this difficult time. Justin Cummins is the main provider; he is self-employed and might not be able to work for several months, according to the GoFundMe.
They have four children, ranging in age from 2 to 17 years old.
The money collected from GoFundMe* would help pay for rent, utilities and groceries. There is a $150,000 goal. As of Monday evening, over $800 had been raised.
“We are reaching out for help to keep our family stable during this time. Thank you for reading our story and for any help you can offer,” reads the GoFundMe webpage.
*KSL.com does not assure that the money deposited into the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account, you should consult your own advisers and otherwise proceed at your own risk.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
