A battling young woman who was told by medics she would never walk again after a horror car crash left her with devastating injuries has defied the odds – to become a MODEL.
Aletia Davies was just 16 years old when she spent four months in a coma after the car she was a passenger in smashed into a tree at high speed.
The brave teen was left with a brain injury, left partially blind in both eyes and lost her hearing in one ear following the crash on October 26, 2011.
Her face was so badly damaged her jaw bone snapped in two and had to be removed completely and replaced by five metal plates.
She underwent four major operations on her face and shoulder and surgeons used old photographs of her to rebuild her shattered features.
Remarkably, despite having 200 stitches inside her mouth, she only had one stitch in her face.
Doctors warned her she would never walk or talk again as a result of her injuries but Aletia has defied the medics and this week signed for a top modelling agency.
The former hairdresser, now aged 20, said: “I didn’t think I’d be able to follow my dream to be a model because of everything that had happened, but I proved the doctors wrong, I am very determined.
“My face has been reconstructed, I haven’t got a lower jaw, but I’ve got five metal plates.
“I’ve got a scar on my shoulder having broken my collar bone, but even with scars I’ve got a modelling contract, I am over the moon.
“I’m going to keep going, I haven’t really got a choice, and I am getting there.
“I’m good at making people laugh, and if anything my humour has become wickeder.”
Aletia was being given a lift home from working as a trainee hairdresser when the car she was in spun off the road and crashed in Llandrindod, Powys, Wales.
The teenager, from Hereford, was airlifted by RAF Sea King helicopter to Cardiff University Hospital with horrendous injuries.
Aletia’s mum Janet, 51, sat at her daughter’s bedside every night for the entire nine months Aletia was in hospital.
She now writing a book based on her diary entries about her daughter’s remarkable recovery.
She said: “I watched her going through every mother’s nightmare.
“I received a phone call from a man who was driving past shortly after the crash and attended Aletia.
“When I first saw Aletia later that night a doctor told me she would probably would not survive the night. I was devastated but never gave up hope.”
“She was put in a Glasgow coma for four months while doctors battled to save her.
“She literally had thousands of bleeds to her brain and doctors told me that if she did recover she would never walk or talk again.
“But one morning I gave her a cuddle when she was unconscious and she whispered in my ear ‘mum’. I was over-joyed and a month later she regain consciousness.
“Doctors said she would never walk or talk again, but she has proved them all wrong.”
Aletia remained in intensive care for another five months before finally being allowed to return home in May 2012.
Janet, who has three other grown-up children and lives with partner Joe, 42, became Aletia’s full-time carer and helped her daughter learn how to walk again.
She said: “Aletia needed a lot of help, especially with her speech and walking. She is brain damaged and needs to carry a card with her telling people she has a traumatic brain damage because when she talks she sounds drunk.
“She never lost her ambition to become a model and six months ago we took some pictures of her and sent them off to a number of modelling agencies.
“We didn’t really expect anything to come of it but suddenly we got a call last week offering a contract.
“She hasn’t stopped smiling for over a week. She won’t be able to walk on high heels but it has given her a new lease of life.”
Aletia is now on the books of Bristol-based Talent Management modelling agency.
