A young Perth boy who almost died in a quad bike accident while on the trip of a lifetime to Bali is back kicking goals.
After seven months fighting catastrophic injury, Joshua Schuetz is back doing what he loves and his family has spoken to 9News exclusively.
Asked what he would do in his first football game back from injury, Joshy was confident: “Score a hat-trick.”
Nurse Kylie Tefler described him as a “very tenacious young man, very determined”.
The little boy from Waikiki in Perth’s south survived the brush with death on a family holiday in November.
The Schuetz family had been on the Indonesian tourist hotspot for a football tournament.
“It was great. We had a good time. We had lots of family time together,” mother Anna Schuetz said.
“We went to Gili island together, did lots of snorkelling and fishing, and one of the highlights should have been the quad bike tour.”
But disaster struck when the quad bike Joshy and his brother were riding flipped.
The then eight-year-old was trapped under water and underneath the heavy vehicle.
“All I thought about was getting the quad bike off and getting out of the water as quickly as possible,” brother Lucas Schuetz said.
His father was just metres ahead but helpless in the unfolding crisis.
“When I saw him in the van, I thought, ‘He’s gone’,” father Holger Schuetz said.
“His eyes rolled back and he was shaking – that’s it, and no reaction anymore from him.”
Joshy was rushed into emergency surgery in Denpasar, put into an induced coma and flown to Perth in a medevac.
It was months before the aspiring football player was free from complicated operations and intensive rehab.
“It just didn’t really feel real, like the whole thing. It’s just it didn’t feel that it’s actually us,” Anna said.
While the accident happened in Bali, there’s a stark warning to parents in Perth.
Three in five quad bike crashes involving children require a trip to emergency, with the majority of kids not wearing a helmet.
Both Schuetz boys were wearing helmets when their quad bike rolled.
“A helmet will always make a difference,” Tefler said.
“[He suffered] serious injuries but he might not have made it at all without a helmet.”
