'It really is a miracle': Hartland hockey player survived fiery crash, made all-state team

HARTLAND — Chris Nelson could see the accident unfold in his rear-view mirror.

The car behind him on 7 Mile Road near Whitmore Lake went off the road on a tight curve and slammed into a tree on the afternoon of May 6, 2023.

Nelson braced himself for the worst as he quickly turned around and headed toward the wreck to render assistance.

“I thought it was a fatal accident,” Nelson said. “It was violent.”

Nelson was actually relieved to hear cries for help coming from inside the car. There was hope.

“That’s when I realized someone was alive,” the Whitmore Lake resident said.

Help had arrived, but Hartland High School sophomore Ty Kraut wasn’t out of danger.

He wouldn’t be until Nelson pulled him from the wreckage of a car that was beginning to go up in flames. A tourniquet was applied to limit blood loss from an open wound on his right knee, and two paramedics worked on him in an ambulance driven by a fire chief. Surgery was performed at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor.

Kraut would survive the horrific accident, which left only charred remains of his car, but faced an uncertain future after two knee surgeries and a badly broken foot pointing in the wrong direction.

“We were told he might not walk again, might not be able to walk without a limp, might not ever play hockey or baseball again,” Kraut’s mother, Wendy, said.

Nobody who helped save Kraut’s life that day envisioned the 16-year-old boy would be back on the ice again with his Hartland teammates six months later, and be named a first-team all-state defenseman by season’s end.

“It really is a miracle,” Nelson said.

The accident

Kraut was driving home after helping the Hartland baseball team organize a youth clinic, still on a high after hitting his first varsity home run during an 8-2 victory over Howell three days earlier.

There are a series of twists and turns on 7 Mile Road, which cuts through an area with several lakes. Nelson, in fact, rarely drives 7 Mile Road because of frequent deer crossings and an accident he had there when he was 19. He decided to take the scenic route from Whitmore Lake to South Lyon that day on a food run.

Kraut was a couple car lengths behind Nelson when the accident occurred.

“I was just coming around a turn,” Kraut said. “I went off the road and hit a tree. Then there were people who helped me and did a great job helping me get out and called 911. A guy who was in the military put a belt on my leg as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

“I was in shock a little bit, but also I just didn’t know what was going to happen next. My knee had a big gash and my foot was broken pretty bad. I was kind of out of it a little bit in the ambulance.”

Nelson, who has become close with the family, said there wasn’t much time to spare in rescuing Kraut.

“In another two minutes, no one would’ve been able to pull him out,” Nelson said. “He’d have been burned. Within 10 minutes, that thing was pretty much engulfed.”

Another hero that day was Josh Bucher, who was working across the street putting tile in a home. He came outside to cut some tile when he saw Nelson running toward Kraut’s car.

Bucher sprinted toward the scene, made sure nobody else was in the car and helped Nelson pull Kraut away from the vehicle.

Noticing the severity of the injury to Kraut’s leg, Bucher used Nelson’s belt to apply a tourniquet.

“I knew the leg was not in good shape,” said Bucher, who spent eight years in the Army reserves. “I just wanted to limit the blood loss to give him as much chance as he could have in his surgery. Other than that, he seemed fine. He wasn’t in shock; he was shocked, but he was able to communicate his name. I asked him multiple times was there anybody else in the car, where was he going.”

Unaware of the scene playing out on 7 Mile, Kraut’s parents were attending his sister Piper’s hockey game at Kensington Valley Ice House in Brighton.

His father, Jim, left the game early. He was the first to hear the news when he received a call from the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department. Adding to the anxiety was a warning not to use 7 Mile Road on the way to Ann Arbor.

“I was told it was completely closed down because his car was engulfed in flames,” his father said. “You can only imagine what’s running through your head.”

Wendy Kraut was still at the game with her parents. She let the first call from Jim go to voicemail, figuring it was a question about dinner, but answered when he immediately called back.

“A million things go through your head,” Wendy said. “We had no idea what shape we would find him in.”

Hearing Ty’s voice once they were allowed in his room eased his parents’ worst fears.

“He looked at us and said, ‘I’m OK. I’m OK,'” Wendy said. “That was a huge relief, as anyone could imagine. He was awake. He was coherent. At that moment, I thought, ‘His brain is intact. Everything is going to be OK.’”

Road to recovery

Kraut was able to get out of bed and use a walker four days after the accident. He walked with the aid of crutches the next day and went home the following day.

He wouldn’t begin physical therapy until June 30, but mental and emotional therapy was going to be just as important in his recovery.

Kraut attended his first Hartland baseball game seven days after the accident, receiving a warm reception from his teammates when they saw him hobbling toward the field with his crutches. The plan was for him to sit in a chair near his parents so he could elevate his leg, but he watched the rest of the season from the dugout.

“I think I went to every game,” Kraut said. “I just had to be around the guys, support them, cheer them on. They were great to me. I wanted to be good to them.”

Hartland was in the middle of a season in which it would win a district championship and reach the regional final, but winning became secondary after Kraut’s accident.

“Life check,” Hartland baseball coach Brad Guenther said. “Step back, make sure all the kids’ heads are good. It’s hard to deal with mentally when you see one of your teammates go down like that. That’s a great turnaround. We weren’t sure if he’d ever play again.”

As Kraut progressed through physical therapy, he was offered an improved diagnosis. If everything went well, he could make it back to hockey by his senior season in the fall of 2024.

That wasn’t good enough for Kraut.

“I thought that was way too long,” he said. “I didn’t really want to think about that. I wanted to put all my effort into physical therapy and do what I could to get back out there for this year.”

Kraut attacked physical therapy with the same drive that made him a two-sport varsity athlete as a sophomore.

“Every time I’d go to the doctor, he’d be surprised how well I was doing,” he said. “I was going through exercises better than what they’d expect for what I had.”

Kraut suffered a setback July 9 when he got an infection in his foot, which had been repaired with screws and plates. The hardware was removed July 18, which actually helped him get back on the ice sooner than expected. Had the plates remained in his foot, he wouldn’t have been able to skate for the first time on Sept. 11.

During his lowest moments following the accident, Kraut never complained.

“There were no tears, no ‘Why me? Why did this happen?' Things were going so well,’” his mother said. “There was none of that. He was a trooper all the way through.”

Back on the ice

Kraut said it took him at least one month of skating before he began to feel like himself again.

“I didn’t have the cardio or strength yet,” he said. “Definitely when the season started, I was ready to go.”

Kraut was in the lineup for the season opener Nov. 18 at Houghton, scored his first high school goal the next day in a 3-3 tie at Hancock and played in all 27 of the Eagles’ games.

Kraut, a defenseman, finished with six goals and seven assists.

“The fact he made it back in that short amount of time and was able to play at the level he played, it’s an unbelievable story,” Hartland Hockey Coach Rick Gadwa said. “He’s a special human being. He’s a special player. Ty Kraut’s all business. He puts the work in.”

When the Michigan High School Hockey Coaches’ Association announced its all-state team March 9, Kraut was one of six defensemen on the Division 1 All-State Team.

“I thought it went pretty good,” Kraut said of his season. “I was excited to be out there, playing with a good team. Everybody was pushing you hard.”

A week later, the coaches' association named Kraut the recipient of its perseverance award.

While thankful to be back on the ice, Kraut didn’t think too deeply about what it meant. Like Gadwa said, he’s “all business.”

It was more emotional for his parents watching him do what he loves.

“I cried almost every game, just because I’m so grateful and thankful,” his mom said. “It really was such a huge miracle for him to get there and to that level in such a short time. Again, the expectation was not anywhere close to that. It was a gift.”

— Contact Bill Khan at wkhan@gannett.com. Follow him on X @BillKhan.

This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: 'It really is a miracle': Hartland hockey player survived fiery crash, made all-state team