Teen Recovering After Crash With Moose

17-year-old Amaya Nelson broke nearly every bone in her face, but she's expected to make a full recovery

DULUTH, Minn. – A 17-year-old Northland girl is recovering after her car crashed into a moose on July 7th.

First responders have told her family it’s a ‘miracle’ she and her boyfriend both survived the crash.

The driver, 17-year-old Amaya Nelson, is still in the ICU. She broke nearly every bone in her face, but her family tells us she’s expected to make a full recovery.

For more than a week, Nelson has been getting treatment at St. Mary’s Hospital in Duluth, where we’re told she’s doing as well as can be expected.

“She’s excited about getting out, she’s excited about getting the trach tube out, she’s excited about eating solid foods, and she wants to get her dog Roxy from Georgia,” said Amaya’s father, Scott Nelson.

On the night of July 7th, Nelson and her boyfriend were driving in her Dodge Neon from Hoyt Lakes to her father’s house in Two Harbors.

The couple rounded a corner on Forest Highway 11 and saw a 1,400 pound bull moose standing in the road.

They had no time to stop.

“We went underneath the moose, between its legs, and kind of forklifted him into the windshield and then he rolled the rest of the way over,” explained Amaya’s boyfriend, Remington Dellinger.

The car rolled down a twenty-foot embankment, which the couple had to crawl out of before they could call for help.

“My initial reaction was ‘are they alive?’ because I work on cars and I see cars smashed when a deer hits or a moose hits and it’s never good,” said Scott Nelson.

Dellinger suffered whiplash and a concussion. Amaya Nelson had much more serious injuries.

“When I saw her, her face was pretty messed up and I started crying and it was pretty emotional because she was hurting pretty bad,” said Scott Nelson.

But she wasn’t paralyzed and didn’t have any other severe injuries.

Doctors tell her family they don’t expect her to suffer from long-term health effects.

“It puts everything into perspective,” said Dellinger. “All the little annoyances of life kind of don’t mean anything now.”

Scott Nelson believes his daughter survived because she was helped by a higher power.

“I believe God was there and the guardian angels were there and the car did its job,” he said.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to assist in Amaya Nelson’s recovery.

Her family is hoping to raise $15,000 to reduce the financial burden on her family members and help her purchase a safe car.