A new motorised trike, intended as a birthday gift, turned into a source of tragedy for a father who lost his leg in a horrific accident just hours after the purchase.
Cameron Hassall, 32, bought the £2,500 trike for his father, Mike, and decided to ride it home as a surprise.
With his family watching, the trike skidded near their Sileby home, throwing Cameron into a concrete fence post at low speed.
The impact “ripped apart” his left leg, leaving a “gaping hole”, he said.
The subsequent medical ordeal included multiple amputations and treatment for gangrene, leaving Cameron in a wheelchair and battling PTSD.
Now his mother, Amanda, is striving to raise £10,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to fund a lightweight prosthetic leg and physiotherapy.
The ultimate goal is to help Cameron regain mobility so he can do activities with his seven-year-old son.
“I sat on the sofa with my mum two weeks ago, crying my eyes out, and I’ve never let anybody see me cry,” Cameron said.
“The day after that, I went out to the car with my dad and I just saw the fence and the wall and that was it – I was panicking, I was crying, I was sweating – I just couldn’t pull myself together.
“If I have a prosthetic leg, it means I can do more day-to-day activities with my son – I can play football with him, I can go for a walk with him.
“I know it will take time to get to that point, but it will give me something to look forward to.”
It was Mike’s “all-time dream” to own a trike, so after saving for three to four years, Cameron decided to buy his father a model based on a Reliant Robin for his birthday.
On June 1, 2024, the day before his father’s birthday, Cameron had bought the trike and called his family, asking them to stand outside the front of the house.
Then the trike went into a skid, Amanda said.
“The fence post, which was concrete, smashed his ankle and the clutch pedal on the trike ripped his leg apart ... I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Cameron said he did not feel much pain at first and his first thought was that he had let his dad down, because the trike was something he’d “always wanted”.
Cameron was blue-lighted to Leicester Royal Infirmary. It was discovered his left ankle had been “shattered into thousands of pieces”, Amanda said, and he underwent his first surgery to reconstruct his ankle.
The second surgery involved taking “a huge muscle out of his back” for a skin graft, which left him in the operating theatre for nearly 14 hours.
However, gangrene – where a loss of blood supply causes body tissue to die – later set in, and Cameron underwent surgery to amputate his left leg below the knee.
In January 2025, he had more of his leg amputated after developing a bone infection.
Cameron now uses a wheelchair and often experiences “excruciating” pain when he moves his left leg.
He said he has been left with PTSD and has counselling every week, and if he sees the scene of the accident, he has a panic attack.
Amanda said she wants to raise funds for a prosthetic leg so Cameron can spend quality time with his son.
“To be able to do that for my boy and to see him grab that little bit of independence back, I’d give the world for that.”
To donate, visit Cameron’s fundraising page.
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