CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The community is rallying around an employee of a Charlotte family-owned business, who suffered a life-changing accident on Easter Sunday.
Thang Sum, a refugee from Myanmar, worked for three years at Pasta & Provisions as the assistant pasta maker.
He worked alongside head pasta maker Agustin Ortes.
"He is a very good employee, and I miss him a lot. God willing, he’ll return soon,” Ortes said.
Owner Tommy George said Sum fell on a trampoline and broke his neck on Easter Sunday, which left him paralyzed from the neck down.
“The day he had the accident, he was jumping on the trampoline with his nieces and nephews,” George said. “He was just a real fun-loving guy.”
George has known the family for a few years. Sum’s brother, Pau, was an employee at the pasta company and specialty store before Thang Sum started working there.
When George heard about the accident, he helped start an online fundraiser to pay for Sum’s medical expenses and support Sum’s family.
“Knowing Pau and knowing Thang, and the hardships they’ve already been through and like I said everybody loved [Sum] here. He was a great employee. You can’t just abandon someone like that. I would want someone to treat me the same way,” George said.
In one day, people donated $20,000. As of Saturday, the GoFundMe effort had raised over $58,000.
“Thank you for the community for the outpouring of support,” George said.
He’s also grateful for the thoughts and prayers of the community as Sum continues his long road to recovery.
George said Sum can’t breathe on his own right now and was recently moved back to the intensive care unit because he developed pneumonia again.
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in 2014, doctors treated more than 104,691 injuries related to trampolines in the U.S.
Kelly Moriarty, a nurse who is a Novant Health injury prevention specialist, said Charlotte children and adults also visit the ER for these types of injuries.
She said to use trampolines safely, you should use all the pieces the trampoline comes with, including the guard nets because they prevent people from landing on the metal surfaces of the trampoline or off of the trampoline.
She doesn’t recommend children under age 6 to use large trampolines.
Moriarty also said the safest way to jump on a trampoline is to do it alone.
“You should always have adults supervising children because a lot of injuries also happen when you are horseplaying, so when you are playing with somebody else or trying to do flips and tricks and stuff like that, where you have the potential of doing a summersault and then land on your head or your neck,” Moriarty said.
She said injuries can be minor, like a sprained ankle or a wrist. They can also be more serious involving the head, neck or spinal cord.
Moriarty added injuries in adults are not as common but tend to be more serious.
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