Rock Thrown at Car Put Boy’s Life on Line : Recovery Seen as ‘a Miracle’

It started out as a happy expedition, a trip to find a dress for a wedding.

It ended in trauma: A 6-year-old boy seriously--almost fatally--injured from a rock thrown from the side of a freeway and into a car--an action that could have resulted in the deaths of all five people in the car.

That Daniel Yonan, 6, is recovering from his skull injuries is, in his doctors’ words, “a miracle.”

Carol and Alan Yonan sat in their home in Chino and recalled the night of April 2, a Tuesday in the week before Easter. Daniel, shy and momentarily reluctant to be photographed, snuggled on the sofa beside his mother.

Carol Yonan said that she, her mother, her sister, her daughter Stacy, 11, and Daniel had gone shopping to find her mother a dress for her sister’s impending wedding. They were on their way to her sister’s home in Sunland, traveling at about 9:30 at night on a dark stretch of the 210 Freeway near Osborne Street. “I was driving,” Carol Yonan said. “My sister was in the front with me, and my mother and Stacy were in the back with Daniel.

“He was leaning his head on the front seat, falling asleep.

“It happened so fast I didn’t really realize what had happened. I heard a popping noise. . . . I just knew the windshield was broken.

“I pulled over and stopped and turned on the light and found out it was Daniel (who was hurt). . . . We didn’t know where there was a hospital or what to do. We decided to go to my sister’s house, where we called the paramedics.

“They took Daniel to Lakeview Terrace Hospital, which was very close to where the accident happened, but we didn’t know. . . .”

X-rays showed that Daniel’s skull was fractured, and doctors at Lakeview Terrace Hospital recommended that he be moved to Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles. His injuries were so serious that he was transported by helicopter.

“It was an incredible fracture,” said Dr. Antonio Galvis, acting head of pediatric intensive care at Childrens Hospital. “It caused a wound like a pothole three or four inches in diameter in the boy’s head. It was like a hand grenade exploded in his head. The fragments of bone were embedded in his brain and the brain was bruised.

“He was seen by Dr. Miles Little, a neurosurgeon. We had to remove the bone fragments from the brain, and there was necrotic (dead) material that had to be scooped out.”

Galvis described Daniel’s recovery as “uneventful,” although he was given antibiotics to prevent infection and medication to prevent seizures.

“There is a possibility that he might develop seizures later because of scarring of the brain, but this has not happened so far,” Galvis said. “His IQ has not been affected as far as we know. He has lost some skills on his left side; the injury was to the right side of his brain, which controls functions on the left side of the body.

“But he could have been killed. He could have been rendered a vegetable or made blind. If his mother had lost control of the car, all of them could have been hurt seriously.”

The doctor paused and shook his head at a question about who would throw rocks at cars on a freeway.

“Throwing rocks is very common; it is a national epidemic, usually done by children,” he said.

Indeed, rock-throwing may be an international phenomenon. Clips in The Times library report incidents in several foreign countries as well as locally, including Israel and the Soviet Union.

Officers of the California Highway Patrol’s Glendale office, to which the Yonan incident was reported, could find no record of the case, but Public Affairs Officer Bob Vargas said that similar occurrences come to the CHP’s attention “once or twice a month.”

They occur, he said, especially on certain sections of a freeway and normally involve juveniles 12 to 16. He said that merely throwing a rock is a misdemeanor punishable by six months in jail and a fine and that the action becomes a felony if intent to do great bodily harm is found.

Los Angeles Police Department clinical psychologist Martin Riser said that most rock-throwing is done by “young adolescent males looking to find a feeling of power, a way to influence life in some way.”

“They throw rocks at cars or do something else like mistreat animals, beat up younger kids, steal hubcaps or shoplift,” Riser said. “It’s my feeling that the activity is designed to provide a sense of power and control.

“Throwing rocks at passing cars also gives a feeling of anonymity; the drivers and passengers are people who are just passing through, unknown to the rock throwers, and the guilt of those throwing the rocks is minimal. The feeling of power exists on a fantasy level as well as one of reality.

“This is speculative, but I think the problem is more related to lower socioeconomic conditions, just like gang activities. It expresses feelings of frustration, inferiority, of being treated in a second-class way, of being alienated from the mainstream of society. It is a way of wanting recognition and to get even with society.”

Carol and Alan Yonan, parents of Bryan, 13, and Stacy, 11, looked lovingly at their youngest child, Daniel, a handsome dark-eyed little boy. His dark hair is growing back into a butch style--and the indention in his skull is still visible. He appears active and normal, romping with a cousin, Christopher Hannah, and the family dog, Windy.But the trauma is not over for his family.

Carol Yonan keeps the rock that injured her son on the mantel, amid an array of family photographs. It is sizable, 6 to 8 inches long and 4 to 5 inches in diameter, and fairly heavy. The Yonans speculate that its impact was exacerbated by the speed of the car, 55 or 60 miles per hour on a lightly traveled freeway.

Carol Yonan worries that Daniel must take phenobarbital as a precaution against seizures and that doctors may decide in the fall to put a steel plate in Daniel’s skull. She is concerned about psychological trauma as well as physical.

“Daniel’s whole personality changed (after the accident),” she said. “Maybe we spoiled him, gave him too much attention, but he became hard to handle. It could have been the medication, which is supposed to make him drowsy, but the label says it can have the reverse effect.

“His head has a dent in it, and it pulsates sometimes; you can see it.

“He was in kindergarten at the time and actually, because it was Easter vacation, he only missed two days of school. But when he went back, he couldn’t play, couldn’t have any physical activity. And he was bald. I think it has upset him.”

Prayers, Gifts

The Yonans, who attend St. Margaret’s Catholic Church, are grateful for the prayers of their fellow parishioners for Daniel and for the gifts showered on their injured son. And when he returned to school at St. Margaret’s, Carol Yonan said, “everybody worried he would fall” and watched over him.

Alan Yonan admits that he had thoughts of taking his rifle to the spot where the accident happened and seeking revenge for what the rock thrower did to his son. He has thought of going door-to-door in the neighborhood near the 210 Freeway and Osborne Street to beg parents to tell their children of the serious damage that they can do throwing rocks.

He talks of mounting a campaign for better lighting along freeways, of urging legislators to see the problem and take action. Yonan, an accountant, estimates Daniel’s medical bills, partly covered by insurance, at more than $10,000; one comes away with the feeling that the price is a small one for his son’s life and health.

But mostly Alan Yonan talks of the same miracle the doctors mention: his son’s survival and prospects for a normal life.

“It’s something watching a helicopter land on the hospital roof and knowing your son is there,” he said.

“I just prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed. And cried. In the hospital I saw God; I talked to him. We made a deal. So when I get up in church and talk about it, I say that I know Daniel’s recovery was a miracle. The rock hit the brain, and there was no sign of a blood clot and you tell me that is not a miracle!

“Am I a religious man? No . . . but before this I would never shake and break into tears in church. One of my promises to God is to let people know what happened. The other is personal.”

Carol Yonan nodded in agreement.

“Something like this,” she said, “changes your life and your perspective.”