WESTLAND, Mich. (WXYZ) — Officials from Wayne County Parks say Middlebelt Hill in Westland is closed to the public.
People are not able to go up the sledding hill due to concerns for safety.
“I think that that hill needs to be permanently closed down,. I hope that it’s not going to be open again, and families should know to stay away from there,” Michele Maley said.
Michele Maley’s daughter, Jessica Wollweber, was injured after she went sledding at Middlebelt Hill, also known as Deadman's Hill, last Thursday.
“Jessica went down the hill first and tragically went through the woods and hit a tree head-on,” Maley said.
Wollweber is now in critical condition at the hospital after she suffered a traumatic brain injury.
“My daughter is going to have a long haul. She’s does have some permanent brain damage. She actually had a stroke as a result of this,” Maley said.
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I also spoke to Dr. Candace Kimpson, an emergency physician at Detroit Medical Center, and she told me that head injuries are common during sledding incidents.
She says there are signs to be on the lookout for if you think someone hit their head while sledding.
“If a child or a person of any age has a head injury and they're acting abnormally — if there's vomiting, if they're gait, they're walking, all of a sudden becomes unstable, if their vision is blurry, if there's anything that's questionable about how they're behaving after an injury to the head — they should be seen in the emergency room,” Kimpson said.
Wollweber’s crash was one of three that the Westland Fire Department says they have responded to at Middlebelt Hill in the past two weeks.
Maley says more needs to be done to protect people on the hill if it does reopen.
“There’s no bales of hay to protect people coming off the hill when the woods are so close,” Maley added. “There’s no barrier wall.”
The Wayne County Sheriff's Office says if someone goes pass the barricades while the hill is closed, they will be issued a citation.
