Hannah Leonard (22), a former Loreto Bray student, had been training for this weekend’s Dublin Marathon, which she was running in honour of her late grandmother, and went out for a run while abroad on the island of Sicily.
After only several kilometres, she was struck by a car while crossing at a pedestrian crossing and was sent “flying approximately 15 feet across the road”, landing on her head.
Hannah’s family reported that she suffered “devastating brain injuries”, and underwent three hours of life-saving neurosurgery shortly after the incident.
During the course of the surgeries, a large piece of Hannah’s skull was removed in order to access her brain and relieve the pressure. The piece of skull has yet to be replaced.
Following her neurosurgery she was transferred to ICU where she remains today.
Hannah’s uncle, Ralph Leonard, who lives abroad, travelled to Sicily where he spent the first two weeks as the rest of the family, including Hannah’s parents, Kevin and Vanessa, her two siblings and her boyfriend made the journey over to be by her side.
Since the initial surgery, Hannah has undergone several additional surgeries including a tracheotomy and fitting of a catheter to her head to remove excess brain fluid, and she is receiving frequent CT scans in order to monitor the swelling on her brain.
“The latest update, is she’s still stable,” said Ralph, speaking on Friday, October 25. “Which is good because when we first got there, they thought the prognosis was going to be completely different. And when I arrived, the opinion at that stage was that she wasn’t going to make it.
“But then two hours later they said, no, there’s still brain activity as long as there’s brain activity, we’re going to continue working on her.
“Kev and Vanessa have been very positive. They’re coping with the situation. It is very, very tough to see your daughter lying in an ICU bed on machines with bruising and swelling and everything else.
“So, she’s still there in ICU. Doctors just keep saying she’s stable. They’re trying to figure out what the plan is,” he explained.
“She’s not medically sedated anymore, which is good because they’ve started to get some responses out of her. If you touch her shoulder, she kind of nudges back. So, she’s recognising that she’s getting touched but she’s still very much in a coma. But All the bruising and swelling thankfully has come down. It’s really just a case of her recuperating now, having rest and taking time.”
Ralph added that the medical team have been “amazing and very attentive, with three neurosurgeons on the ICU “who are giving her all the attention they can”.
“They said she’s the first patient they think of in the morning, and the last patient they think of in the evening,” he said.
The accident was, as Ralph reported on the GoFundMe page, a horrific one, with Hannah literally “sent flying approximately 15 feet across the road”.
Elaborating on what happened, Ralph said her parents had gone to the scene of the accident and spoke to the woman who had witnessed it and had called the ambulance.
Ralph said Hannah was actually on the zebra crossing, and normally “they’re very obedient when it comes to zebra crossings in Sicily, as soon as you put a foot near them, they stop”.
“Even when people see you approaching one, they stop. She was out for a run crossing the zebra crossing. It looked like she was about halfway across. And the guy was just completely distracted and hit her. We think her head hit the windscreen first. Then she was thrown about 15 feet down the road, where she passed out on her head. Then the driver, he stayed with her, to be fair, he tended to her. There was a doctor close by who came over and tended to her as well while they waited for the ambulance.
“The ambulance took about 20 minutes to get there. But they were lucky that she was close to a hospital, so they brought her straight to a hospital,” Ralph explained. “Then they decided to transfer her to neurosurgery in San Marco Hospital in Catania, which is an amazing hospital, it’s quite new. She’s getting amazing attention there. Then when she got there, they had to do three hours worth of, as they call it, life-saving neurosurgery just to get her stable. And pretty much she’s been in a coma ever since.”
While Ralph had to leave, the family are still by Hannah’s side, at least comforted that she is in very capable hands.
“I think the thing with brain injuries, you can Google them and research them as much as you like,” Ralph said. “But you’ll get different answers depending on what question you ask. It’s not like, you know, getting your appendix out where they can tell you what the stages of recovery are,” Ralph said.
“This is very much down to her continuing to fight, and she is fighting. And she’s doing exceptionally well. Originally they had said that she wasn’t going to make it. But the way we’re dealing with it at the moment is any day that’s not negative is positive. So even if she’s still stable, it’s positive,” he added.
In a separate fundraising appeal, which Hannah had herself set up ahead of the Dublin Marathon 2024, she announced that she had chosen to fundraise for the Bray charitable organisation, Purple House Cancer Support, where her grandmother, Caroline, had been a service user.
“Nine years ago, my grandmother passed away from cancer. She was like a second mother to me and we were super close, which is why Purple House Cancer Support is very important to me,” she wrote.
“I care about Purple House deeply, and when I run the Dublin Marathon it will have been exactly 10 years since my dad ran Dublin Marathon for Purple House Cancer Support as well.
“I remember how proud we all were of my dad, and how proud my grandma was when she went out to watch him run the marathon. I admire my dad a lot, and I wanted to run Dublin Marathon for Purple House Cancer Support to make him proud and, hopefully my grandma would’ve been proud too,” she said.
Ralph said the family have found it “heart-warming to see how many people actually know and are thinking of her”, The GoFundMe campaign currently stands at over €80,000. It was set up to ease the financial pressure on Hannah and her family while she remains in hospital abroad.
You can donate to the campaign to support Hannah Leonard and her family, at: gofundme.com/f/support-hannah-leonard-and-her-family-while-they-navigate-he
