Home » Americas » Woman dies years after being hit by 20lb frozen turkey hurled through windscreen

Woman dies years after being hit by 20lb frozen turkey hurled through windscreen

03/28/2019

A woman has died years after she was whacked in the face by a 20-pound frozen turkey hurled through her car windscreen at 80mph.

Victoria Ruvolo, 59, spent almost one month in a coma and needed a 10-hour operation when a teenager threw the poultry as a senseless prank.

She broke nearly every bone in her face and needed metal plates fitted to correct this.

But it caused life-changing injuries and Victoria died on Monday, nearly 15 years on from her harrowing ordeal.

It is unknown yet if these injuries caused her death.

"It is with a very heavy heart that we announce the sudden and unexpected passing of our beloved Vickie," a message on her Facebook page read.

Victoria was praised after she decided not to press charges against Ryan Cushing, 18, in Long Island, New York.

Cushing used a stolen credit card to buy the massive turkey and, with pals, climbed into a car and drove onto a motorway.

He chucked the bird out of the window and it smashed through Victoria's windscreen as she drove home from a family day out.

"They couldn't even tell if I was a man or a woman because my whole face was totally smashed.

"My left eye was dangling somewhere else.

"They put me in an induced coma because my brain was swelling.

"The fire department told me that the turkey would have been coming at me at between 80mph and 100mph," Victoria said in a TV interview in 2011.

During the aftermath of the ordeal, Victoria gave motivational talks about forgiveness.

The teenagers responsible were arrested and Cushing faced 25 years in jail.

But Victoria worked with his lawyer to get him amnesty for the crime.

She wrote on her website: "Some people couldn’t understand why I’d done this but I felt God had given me a second chance and I wanted to pass it on.

"I felt strongly that I didn’t want to be responsible for taking this other young person’s life.

"I didn’t want Ryan to rot in jail."

Cushing was eventually sentenced to just six months in prison and five years of probation.

news24x7world