Continuing the Crook County News Since 1884
Continuing the Crook County News Since 1884
Joe Zabel, from right, his daughter Addison and Justin West play a game of basketball in specialized wheelchairs at the Campbell County Recreation Center on April 19 in Gillette. Zabel has been working with the Campbell County Recreation Foundation to raise money for these wheelchairs.
GILLETTE - Justin West stopped bull riding in 2010. He'd recently had a bad fall, and doctors told him that if he had one more accident he would likely be paralyzed.
A few years later, he was in the Big Horn Mountains for his brother's birthday. They were riding snowmobiles when they came up on what they thought was a 5-foot drop. It turned out to be a 40-foot drop.
"I closed my eyes, and all I thought about was, I'm dead," he said.
Miraculously, West survived the fall. But he knew instantly that he'd broken his back going over the handlebars, and that his life would change forever.
Nine years...
