Battler John is fighting back after US accident

A MIDLAND tourist was almost paralysed in a freak accident on a dream US holiday.

- BEN PERRIN News Reporter

John with wife Eleanor and, inset above, John in hospital

John Boyles, 67, damaged his spinal cord in a fall at a Nascar racetrack in Indianapolis in July last year.

Only emergency surgery stopped him being paralysed from the neck down, but he spent months in hospital in America and back in the UK.

He has also lost the use of his middle, ring and little fingers on both hands.

Now John, from the village of Whitacre Heath, near Tamworth, can only walk short distances unaided and uses a combination of crutches and a mobility scooter to get around.

He has been fundraising for the Spinal Injuries Association, one of the charities that supported him after his injury.

John, who returned home in February after rehabilitation at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry, said: “I was in Indianapolis watching a Nascar qualifying race with my family when I tripped down some steps and fell forward.