7-year-old Christmas Day crash victim gets new leg

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Jim Noelker/U'Neisha Taste was fitted with a prosthetic leg at OrPro Prosthetics & Orthotics in Dayton Tuesday, June 23, 2009. Taste lost her leg Christmas Day 2008 in a car accident. Her family joined her at the fitting.

Staff photo by Jim Noelker Jim Noelker/U'Neisha Taste was fitted with a prosthetic leg at OrPro Prosthetics & Orthotics in Dayton Tuesday, June 23, 2009. Taste lost her leg Christmas Day 2008 in a car accident. Her family joined her at the fitting.

By Ben Sutherly, Staff Writer Updated 5:08 PM Tuesday, June 23, 2009

DAYTON — U’Neisha Taste rode piggyback into OrPro Prosthetics & Orthotics on her aunt’s back and shoulders.

It was Tuesday, June 23, just shy of six months after a Christmas Day wreck that left her without her lower right leg and injured four other children.

A little over an hour later, the 7-year-old walked out of OrPro on her own, aided only by a prosthesis.

U’Neisha has big plans now that she has regained some mobility, foremost to ride her pink Hannah Montana bike and to just “have fun.” She also has been issuing invitations for a party next weekend that will, appropriately, coincide with Independence Day.

U’Neisha has a lot to celebrate. When Olajuwon Howard of Dayton ran a stop sign at Mia and Kammer avenues, the Oldsmobile he was driving struck her family’s Pontiac Grand Am, whose occupants were en route to a Christmas gathering. U’Neisha was thrown from the car, her leg pinned beneath it. She spent two months in the hospital.

“We’re thankful she’s alive, but it’ll never be the same,” U’Neisha’s grandmother, Karen Davenport, said Tuesday.

Carrie Melton and fellow certified prosthetist/orthotist Michelle Poeppelman, who has worked with U’Neisha since April, said family support has fueled her motivation to recover.

U’Neisha will have regular follow-up appointments for the rest of her life. But the first steps she took during a June 16 fitting for her prosthesis were huge ones.

“Literally her face lit up and she started running down through the parallel bars” without holding them, Melton said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7457 or bsutherly@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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