Denver boy on his way back home from Belize after horseback riding accident thanks to overwhelming response

UPDATE: Thanks to an outpouring of support and response to Stefan Keryan's story, he is on a flight back from Belize and will be landing in Colorado Sunday night. Thanks to the owner of Peak Medevac who saw his story on Denver7 News and offered to go pick him up for free. We'll have a full story later. Read the original report below.

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DENVER — A young boy from Denver is fighting for his life in Belize after suffering a horseback riding accident while on vacation.

Denver7 spoke to the mother of 8-year-old Stefan Keryan, who ispleading for help to get him back home to Colorado as quickly as possible.

It all started out as a fun family vacation, "My family and I went on our first ever cruise through Carnival and Belize was one of the stops for the day. We planned to go to a monkey sanctuary and the tour included a horseback ride," said Heidi Keryan, Stefan's mother.

But things took a terrifying turn.

"I heard yelling, and I looked over. I see this horse coming from where everybody goes to go on the trail or whatever back down the road towards us. And as it's running past I see that the saddle is flipped, and my son is being dragged by his foot," she added. "My older daughter and I, you know, started yelling and screaming and running as fast as we could to get to him. But that horse was really fast."

She said thankfully someone jumped into a car and stopped the horse down the road. Stefan is in a Belize hospital, fighting for his life. His family is working as hard as they can to get him back to Colorado.

"He's hanging in there, he's not gonna make it if he stays out here. People have been amazing to us. We have had strangers come up to us and cry with us and pray with us and bring us flowers and food and the people in the hospital saved his life," said Heidi Keryan. "He's alive right now because of them. But they don't have the specialty care that he needs. They don't have a burn specialist. They don't have a plastic surgeon for the back of his head. They don't have the equipment and the medicine and the things that he needs to survive and heal."

"He really wants to come home. Just this morning that he was crying and begging me to get him home. He just wants to come home," added Keryan. "He needs a medical aircraft with medical personnel that can monitor him and administer his medications, watch his brain activity, all of that stuff. So we're looking out over $40,000.

Keryan Family

They've launched a GoFundMe to cover the costs to get him home.Heidi is asking for the community's help to save him.

"As a mom, it's the most critical thing. It's all I can think about. I will do anything to get by somehow. All I care about is him living. And I know if I can get him to a place that has the resources. I don't want to lose my son. And if anybody knows somebody that will go get him and bring him home. That works too. I don't care. I just I want to get him home," she said.