Aaron Horsley comes home

The last time Aaron Horsley was here, he was riding on a very different set of wheels.

"One wheel [mark] right here," Wayne Horsley says, pushing his son's wheelchair down Redwood Avenue. "And then you flipped right there. Then a drag mark right there."

For the first time in five weeks, Aaron has left Loma Linda University Medical Center, returning to the last place he remembers before waking up there.

Here, on the border of the still-wild and undeveloped High Desert, a man driving a Chevrolet Silverado hit the 17-year-old. The driver, discovering Aaron had become stuck on the truck's undercarriage, swerved back and forth as he drove down Kimball Street, apparently attempting to dislodge the Hesperia High School senior from his vehicle.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department officials believe the man behind the wheel was suspected drug dealer Pedro Gaspar Tellado Oviedo, whom they believe has fled the state.

Friday afternoon, a 14 people -- friends, classmates and parents -- accompanied Aaron down Redwood. There's the sound of another off-road motorcycle nearby, despite the area being illegal to ride in following a 2004 Hesperia city ordinance.

It's not quite a trip down Memory Lane: Horsley, now paralyzed from mid-thigh down and in a wheelchair, cannot remember any of what happened.

"And this is where your helmet was, dragging all the way down," Wayne says, pausing at each spot where the marks had been on the newly laid asphalt.

The entourage stops at the intersection of Kimball Street and Melbourne Avenue.

"And then you ended up right here," Wayne says, "Legs like this."

Aaron considers the spot in silence a moment, his breath shallow and labored. The wounds on his right forearm are bright pink, but are visibly healing. His left arm, though, bears a patch of bulging tan skin, a transplant of skin and veins and tendons from his thigh, replacing flesh that was ground away as he was dragged down Kimball Street.

Despite all his injuries, and the possibility that he will never walk again, he's wearing a dirt bike racing T-shirt.

"That's a long-ass frickin' drag," Aaron says finally.

"You would be dead if you weren't wearing a chest protector," Wayne says.

His son had specifically asked to return to the scene of the incident, see the condition of his 450-cc motorcycle and get a walk-through what had happened.

"There you go," Wayne says. "Welcome home."

Aaron will spend the next two to three weeks at home, celebrating Thanksgiving with his family and getting a break from hospital Jell-O. He will sleep in his own room, although it now features a hospital bed and a hoist. He will be well cared-for, with a nurse, physical therapist and wound care nurse regularly checking in on him. After that, it will be back to Loma Linda for more in-patient care and rehabilitation.

"You remember anything, babe?" his mother, Marilyn Horsley asks, standing nearby.

Her son shakes his head silently.

"Good," she replies.

Beau Yarbrough can be reached at 956-7108 or at beau@hesperiastar.com.