UK woman gored by bison in South Dakota lives to tell her tale

A 19-year-old UK woman, who was on a month-long cross-country road trip in the US along with a friend, has miraculously survived a bison attack. Mia, her friend and her friend's dog were hiking along a Custer State Park trail in South Dakota when they found themselves right in front of a bison.

"They came over a hill and saw down in the dip, quite a way ahead of them, they saw a big, male bison," Mia's father Matthew Dean was reported as saying by People.

While the natural thing to do at such a juncture would be to turn back, Mia and her friend decided otherwise since they had hiked for around two hours and Mia was extremely dehydrated.

They tried to sneak past the animal, but as luck would have it, the bison looked up and ran down the hill at them. It stopped in front of her for a few seconds before piercing its horn through Mia's thigh. The beast tossed her up around 10-15 feet in the air. Mia sustained a completely severed femoral artery, along with damage to the tibial and peroneal nerves.

Her family says thatMia being alive after such a horrible accident is nothing short of a miracle.

"We are beyond fortunate that our daughter is still breathing, as she should have bled out in 2-8 minutes after the severed artery and the ambulance didn’t arrive for 20 minutes. It is a miracle that she is alive today," they wrote on the GoFundMe page created to gather funds for further treatment.

Mia is left paralyzed from the knee down in one of her legs and her travel insurance isn't ready to pay for the examination and treatment of her nerve injury,her family said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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