NYC teen paralyzed, brain damaged in fiery car crash reveals first word after ‘miracle’ recovery: ‘Mom’

A young Staten Island man once on the verge of death after a fiery car crash that left him paralyzed and unable to speak has beaten long odds in what he called a “miracle” recovery.

“God brought me out of that. I’m here today,” Anthony Mercado, 19, told The Post.

The Great Kills resident has hazy memories of the June 2022 accident on South Avenue that left him mangled and clinging to life.

“I learned that cars are thousands of pounds of a weapon that can kill you at any moment,” Mercado said of the incident, which required significant surgeries and rehabilitation.

Even one of his doctors, Dr. Jonathan Rasouli of Staten Island University Hospital, “admittedly had doubts” about a positive outcome for Mercado due to his “devastating injuries.”

The last thing the teen recalled about that fateful night was leaving a senior class trip from Seaside Heights, New Jersey, before being rescued from his burning 2008 Cadillac CTS.

An ex-firefighter who previously responded to 9/11 happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Mercado guesses he wouldn’t have survived if not for the good Samaritan.

“He had scissors and he cut my seat belt out,” Mercado added. “He thought [the devastation] was something out of a movie.”

Mercado, then 17, was brought to Staten Island University Hospital in critical condition and in need of multiple lifesaving interventions including a breathing tube and being put into a medically-induced coma.

While fortunate to have survived such a brutal wreck, he was just starting a years-long ordeal.

“The injuries he sustained were definitely life-threatening,” Rasouli said of Mercado, who was also treated at Northwell Health Lenox Hill Hospital. He added that there was “pretty significant trauma” to the teenager’s head.

“He had bruises on the brain, there was bleeding, he had a significant blood clot that was pressing on his brain, too.”

But Mercado wouldn’t allow his circumstances to get the best of him. He pushed himself to regain speech, starting with producing simple noises like “eh.”

The love and support of Mercado’s family, who kept him hopeful through his long hospital stay, helped the young patient reach a breakthrough in August 2022.

“I called for my mom, I said the word ‘mom,’” he recalled. “She started to cry. Little by little, I started saying more and more words and could speak sentences by the end of that August.”

He said his family helped him learn to walk again, too.

“We didn’t use a wheelchair,” Mercado said. “I walked around with my right arm over my mom’s shoulder. She carried me and I walked little by little over and over and over until I got to walk by myself. That’s what we did.”

Rasouli also recognized the healing power of Mercado’s loved ones.

“I could see that his family, particularly his mom and his sister, had such a fight, such a drive to see him pull through this,” he said. “I knew if he had that familial support that he’d be just fine. He ultimately did fantastic.”

But there was still a long road to go.

In October 2022, Rasouli, along with Dr. Netanel Ben-Shalom, operated for four hours on Mercado to help restore damaged muscles on each side of his skull.

Doctors opted for a decompressive craniectomy, which Rasouli said involved “removing virtually half of his skull to allow the brain to swell out and allow us to fix the fractures that were there.”

Mercado was left without substantial portions of his skull for about two months.

It put him “essentially on life support,” according to Rasouli. “He had a very tough recovery from the surgery and the trauma he sustained.”

“For the first six months, I was not really mentally there,” Mercado said of the debilitating process.

He’s also had 10 surgeries on his left arm with more planned — but Mercado has finally reached a point where he’s preparing to resume a far more routine life. He’s even spent the past year in the gym, doing bicycle exercises to improve his mobility.

“I consider myself finished with the healing process,” Mercado said.

Rasouli is still amazed by his patient’s tenacity.

“If you see him now, you would almost never know anything had happened,” he said.

As a longtime lover of cars, Mercado plans to not only get back into the driver’s seat come 2024 but also perhaps work on them for a living in the near future.

It’s also his goal to own the same car as his lifesaving doctor: a Porsche 911 Turbo S.

“I want to show that I came back from this and that I can be behind a wheel again,” Mercado said. “I can drive a car and I will have a nice car for myself. One day.”