Fact Check

Ivory Watts

Prayers requested for child named Ivory Watts, who was seriously injured in go-cart accident?

Published Dec. 12, 2007

Claim:

Claim:   Prayers are requested for a child named Ivory Watts, who was seriously injured in a go-cart accident.


Status:   Outdated.

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, December 2007]




URGENT PRAYER REQUEST FROM GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
DURANT, OK

Hello to everyone, hope your doing well. I have a personal favor to ask of you, (knowing your praying people) My son in law's sister IVORY is 7 years old and this week she was riding her go cart WITHOUT A HELMET, and lost control landing her under a neighbors double wide that didn't have any skirting.

She was stopped by the floor and support beam by her NECK. She slashed her neck from her ear to her larynx,cutting her thyroid, her juggler was torn slightly causing the blood to drain into her lungs, which then collapsed, she broke her neck, & broke her back. She was air lifted to MUSC, she has had 1 operation on her lower back and they found her spinal cord to be totally cut.

They have to wait for 2 weeks to operate on her larynx, thyroid and neck. Not knowing until then if her spinal cord is torn at the neck... which will tell to what extent she will be paralyzed.

This little girl is only seven years old and has her whole life to live. I ask you to lift her up to God in prayer.

And if you wouldn't mind adding her to your Church prayer chain, we all know what God can do when we only have Faith and come together in unity. I have added an attachment of Ivory, she is the little girl to the left, and then one of her in the Hospital, she is such a pretty little girl, this accident just breaks my heart.

Thank you SO much for your time and most importantly... your prayers.



Origins:   On 14 October 2007, 7-year-old Ivory Watts of Conway, South Carolina, was severely injured when the go-cart she was riding crashed into the side of a mobile home and carried her underneath the structure. The accident broke her neck and back and severed her spinal cord, leaving her a quadriplegic. While her family prayed for her recovery, her doctors give her no hope of getting better: "They said that this is the way she is going to be," reported her mother, Samantha Watts, in a 22 November 2007 news

article.

Tragedy had visited the Watts family earlier in 2007 when on 30 March the car carrying Jonathan Watts (Ivory's father) and Wilda Watts (her paternal grandmother) overturned just 100 yards from the family home, killing both adults. This left Samantha Watts (Ivory's mother) to care for the family's four small children: Ivory (7), Amber (6), Jonathan Jr. (3), and Peyton (1).

This prayer request began circulating on the Internet in October 2007. Because it subsequently came to be forwarded by a number of churches, some of the details that identified the injured child became blurred, including her actual name, where she lived, and even which church she attended. Ivory was a member of the Lake Swamp Baptist Church in Loris, South Carolina, and was being cared for in a hospital in Charleston.

Ivory passed away on Christmas Day in 2009.

Last updated:   27 December 2009





  Sources Sources:

    Mishoe, Peggy.   "Watts Family Coping with Deaths, Injury."

    The [Myrtle Beach] Sun News.   22 November 2007   (p. 2).

    Ramos, Aliana.   "Mother, Son Killed When Car Overturned Late Friday."

    The [Myrtle Beach] Sun News.   1 April 2007.

    The [Myrtle Beach] Sun News.   "Ivory N. Watts" [obituary].

    27 December 2009.

    WNCT-TV [Greenville, NC].   "Lights for Ivory."

    1 December 2007.


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