“Right in Her Abdomen” — Realtor Shares Horrifying Child Injury That Started Strict Showing Rules

Karina Van Orman (@karinasutahomes) has some stories during her time as a realtor. As one can imagine, folks from all walks of life are looking to buy homes. And in any position when you're dealing with the public, you're sure to accrue your fair share of tales in dealing with various and sundry patrons.

Karina's viral tale is one that seems like it was lifted right out of the ending of Michael Cunningham's "White Angel." She says that in this instance, which occurred in her first two years of showing homes, a young child had to take a "life flight" to a hospital while she was working with a client.

Karina says that when she was working with a particular family they would bring their "three little kids" along to check out the houses. She said that children constantly ran around houses to entertain themselves while parents scrutinized the details of the home.

Since this was the norm, Karina was no stranger to "corralling the kids" while showing these houses off "while the parents looked at the home." She said that there was one home in particular in South Ogden, Utah that the couple was really interested in checking out.

The home was in the middle of being renovated. The original homeowners decided to "abandon the project" and just "sell the house" in the middle of these upgrades. Upon arriving, the house was, unsurprisingly, vacant and under construction. The family arrived at the location prior to the realtor.

So when Karina arrived, they were already scoping out the property with the kids zooming about, looking around in the yard and "really excited" about the capacious property. Next, they started walking around the house's interior.

She mentioned that from the front entryway of the house all the way to the "back glass doors" located at the rear of the home, everything was "open and wide." Karina then says as the couple made their way into the kitchen area, she saw their "6-year-old daughter go running from the front of the house as fast as she could."

The realtor continued, "To go running out to the backyard and I could see that she did not realize that the sliding glass door was closed."

Karina says she tried to warn the little girl, "So as she was running full speed I yelled stop, but before she could stop herself she ran straight through that glass door."

She continued, "And unfortunately, that house was built in the '70s. And so that glass ... those glass doors had not been changed yet."

The TikToker went on: "And so, they were actually glass. They didn't fall apart into little particles, they were shards of glass. And so she ran through that glass door and as she turned around, there was a huge shard of glass just right in her abdomen."

Thinking fast, Karina instructed the child to keep her hands away from the injury. But the little girl didn't listen. "And I yelled for her to not touch it. She looked down in total panic and she grabbed it with both hands and pulled it out. And cut her hands and I yelled to the parents and they came running out to the back and laid her down."

Unfortunately, due to the setup in the home, they couldn't use anything to try and stop the bleeding or press against her cuts: "She had head wounds, she had obviously the abdomen wound, and she had totally cut her hands when she pulled out that shard of glass."

Karina said that because she took first responder classes in college, she knew that the abdomen wound was serious and instructed the parents to call 911 immediately, which they did. Karina ran outside to her car to try and grab something to "stop the bleeding."

She grabbed a blanket out of the back of her car and "put pressure on her abdomen" along with the "wounds on her head."

"The ambulance came so fast and they came running up that driveway, I just was amazed at how fast they got there," Karina said. Paramedics immediately got to treating the young girl's abdomen wound, which they were concerned with due to the potential for damage to major arteries and organs.

They were so concerned, in fact, that they wanted her airlifted to a children's hospital in Salt Lake. Only one parent could accompany the child, so the young girl's father went with her, leaving the mom behind with the other two kids, who were huddled in a closet and watching videos on a phone.

Karina asked the mom if she was OK to drive to the hospital to be with her daughter and if there was anywhere she could bring her other kids for the night. The mom said that she was good to drive and gave Karina the address for her mom's house. So Karina, maintaining her composure for the sake of the family, hugged her and dropped her kids off at their grandmother's.

Following up with the mom, she discovered that the shard of glass miraculously didn't hit any major arteries and just barely missed her lower intestine. The realtor brought the family a gift basket and said the 6-year-old was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and then had to be careful for a few weeks after that so as not to re-open any of her wounds.

Later on, she said she ultimately ended up finding the family a home, which wasn't a fixer-upper, and that the family is still in that home until this very day.

As a result, she said that she has "very strict rules" when it involves kids coming to view homes. Ultimately, she doesn't recommend that parents bring their children along.

"We don't know the home and what's safe and what's not safe. We want the parents to be able to really look at it and not have to be super mindful of kids. But if kids come, my rule is they have to stay with us at all times. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. We have them hold our hands through the entire house."

Karina said that although she's grateful the family had a "full recovery" and things went well for them, it was a difficult lesson to learn.

"It was a scary situation, for sure," she said at the end of her second clip on the incident.