The last thing Aaron, 13, remembers before his July 2025 accident is watching the fireworks at Rehoboth Beach. His parents and two siblings were on a July 4th vacation and making their way back to his grandparents’ home after a night of celebrating the holiday. That’s when Aaron was struck by a car. His injuries were substantial: he had a severe traumatic brain injury and fractured his skull, jaw, clavicle, vertebrae and pelvis.
Aaron was in a coma for 2 weeks, He spent three months in the hospital recovering and regaining strength and everyday function through occupational, speech, and physical therapies. Then he was discharged into outpatient care at Kennedy Krieger, a place his parents heard about from his hospital care team.
“They said there was no place in the Washington, D.C. area that offers this level of service. We wanted a care team with brain injury expertise. This was key in understanding his trajectory and future,” his mom Angela says.
Aaron was immediately evaluated by expert staff at Kennedy Krieger’s Center for Brain Injury Recovery. “From a physical standpoint, Aaron was doing well,” Angela says. Aaron began receiving speech and cognitive therapies and continued to be monitored by the brain injury team.
Aaron meets weekly with a psychologist through Kennedy Krieger’s Teen Online Problem-Solving program (TOPS), who provided him with the tools to navigate real-life social and academic situations.
“It’s just amazing,” Angela says. “He needed a therapist with specific [brain injury] expertise to bridge this transition.”
These days, Aaron is cultivating interests both old and new he recently tried his hand at journalism and wrote an essay about his recovery for his middle school newspaper, The Cougar Post, giving his classmates advice on tenacity. “As of recently, there have been some ups and downs, but…this cannot be the end. I have to persevere and continue working hard to reach my goal.”
Public speaking has become a new interest for Aaron, too, and he signed up to be an ambassador for his school as well as Kennedy Krieger.
A rising 8th grader, Aaron has his eyes set on Fall 2026 with the goal of returning to school full time, the first time since the accident. In preparation for that transition, he goes to cognitive rehabilitation every day this summer.
Aaron is independent and can take care of himself, Angela says, but his recovery is not yet over. “The biggest thing we’ve gotten from all of this is that it’s great to have a team with such expertise,” she says.
