Two months later, victim of Ride the Ducks crash struggles with recovery, expenses
Phuong Dinh, a North Seattle College Student from Vietnam, receives help getting back into bed from her father, Hiep Dinh, after a press conference at Keiro Northwest rehabilitation facility in Seattle Wednesday. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times)
Seattle Times
December 2, 2015
By Lewis Kamb
Twitter @lewiskamb
lkamb@seattletimes.com
Phuong Dinh, 18, and her lawyer say the initial response of aid has since subsided.
On a sunny day in September, 18-year-old Phuong Dinh snapped photographs from her window seat in a charter bus filled with other North Seattle College students as it motored across the Aurora Bridge.
“And then, ‘Bam,’ ” she recalled. “Nothing else. Just flashes after that.”
But while in a hospital bed several days later, memories from a deadly crash flooded back: She remembered blood covering her face, seeing a bone piercing through the skin of her left leg.
Dinh said she didn’t recall seeing the lumbering Ride the Ducks tourist vehicle plow into the bus in the crash that killed five international students and injured dozens of other people.