Wichita woman recovering after being run over on Fla. vacation

Erin and Chris Joynt hadn't taken a vacation for a while. So on July 30, somewhat spontaneously, they packed up and hit the road for Florida with their two children.

They drove all night.

Their ultimate destination was Disney World in Orlando, but they went out of their way a bit to Daytona Beach so their 5-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter, landlocked Kansas kids, could play in the ocean.

They never made it to Disney World.

A lifeguard driving a pickup on the beach ran over Erin Joynt's head and upper body as she was sunbathing, sending her to the hospital in critical condition.

She spent six days in a Florida hospital and returned home to Wichita last Monday.

"I'm thankful I'm still here, and it didn't end the way it could have," said Erin Joynt, a former paraeducator who is now a stay-at-home mom. "I know ultimately it happened for a reason."

The family got to the beach about 8:30 or 9 on Sunday morning, July 31.

While her husband and kids played in the water, Erin Joynt, 33, caught some sun. She piled up towels and a lifejacket as a pillow on the sand and relaxed, face down.

"I must have dozed off," she said.

That little nap and the way she was positioned likely saved her life, doctors now say.

She suffered a collapsed lung, broken ribs, fractures of the bones under her eyes, skull fractures and damage to her hearing.

She doesn't remember much about the incident.

"I remember waking up and some guy with a very calm voice told me to hold his leg and stay still," she said from her Wichita home last week. "I remember getting into the ambulance. After that, I have pretty sketchy memories."

Talking about the accident — the third on Volusia County beaches in 13 months — Erin Joynt speaks calmly.

Dark half-moon bruises hang under her eyes, and one side of her face is paralyzed.

Her right lung has healed, and doctors hope surgery will help relieve pressure on a nerve to reverse the paralysis. She saw a doctor in Wichita on Thursday.

Her hearing is getting better each day, she said. In the hospital, Chris Joynt said, "She could barely hear at all."

There was no driving straight through the night on the way home to Kansas. Erin Joynt had to take it slow, and the trip took two days.

Volusia County is revamping its Beach Patrol policies on vehicles, planning to switch to ATVs aimed at giving drivers more visibility, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

A county spokesman wasn't available for comment Friday. But community information specialist Dave Byron said in a July 31 news release that the part-time lifeguard, Tommy Moderie, 21, had worked for the county on and off for five years.

Moderie was "driving in the northbound driving lane of the beach when he was alerted by a beachgoer of broken glass at the water's edge. In response, Moderie made a right turn and struck the female who was laying on her stomach on the beach east of the driving lane.... She was struck with the right front wheel of the county-issued truck, according to the Florida Highway Patrol," the news release said.

Byron told the Orlando Sentinel that Moderie had not taken a required 16-hour beach driving safety course.

Chris Joynt said someone called out for the driver to stop. He didn't.

"All of us heard the screaming," Chris Joynt said.

The Joynts have hired a lawyer and intend to sue, they said.

They haven't yet received any bills from the hospital. Erin Joynt said she will have to see doctors here regularly.

Chris Joynt didn't directly see the accident. Neither did their son.

But their daughter did.

Father and son were facing the water when they heard people screaming. Their daughter was facing the beach.

Their daughter, he said, "saw her body flinch up and come back to the ground."

She helped shield her brother from seeing their mom like that, the Joynts said, calling her very mature for her age.

"She was born grown up," Erin Joynt said.

Their daughter kept it together until the ride to the hospital, her dad said, when she broke down in tears.

Following the ambulance in the family's truck, she asked her brother why he was crying.

"Because you are," he said.

This story was originally published August 14, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Wichita woman recovering after being run over on Fla. vacation."