Bringing a Trooper Back to His Feet
Audra Hillerman felt uneasy. Her son, Kentucky State Trooper Logan Hillerman, hadn’t held up his end of their almost daily routine.
“Usually I text him, every shift before he’d go out on the road, ‘Be safe,’ and he’d always say, ‘I love you,’” Audra said. “I never got that text that day. When I had a call come and it said it was from the Kentucky State Police, I knew something was wrong. I didn’t have good phone service, and all I could hear was, ‘Trooper Hillerman has been involved in a serious accident.’ I fell apart.”
Around 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2023, the 24-year-old’s police vehicle collided with another on a narrow, rain-slicked road in Phelps, Ky., while he was on his way to a reported overdose in the tiny Pike County community.
“I lost consciousness,” Logan said. “And then the next thing I knew, fire department responders were at the scene, trying to keep me calm.”
First responders stabilized Logan and rushed him to Pikeville Medical Center, nearly an hour away from where the accident occurred. There, imaging revealed extensive injuries: a shattered left pelvis, a broken right pelvis, a fractured forearm, broken ribs and a punctured lung. He also had a significant concussion.
The staff at Pikeville Medical Center quickly realized his injuries required more specialized care and attempted to arrange a helicopter flight to UK’s Albert B. Chandler Hospital, but the weather conditions were too dicey. So, Logan instead endured a long ambulance ride, aided by an escort of fellow state troopers, to Lexington.
The Wright Expert
Dr. Raymond Wright, an orthopaedic surgeon renowned for his ability to handle complex fractures, particularly those involving the pelvis, introduced himself to Logan almost immediately when he got to Chandler Hospital.
Wright’s firm handshake stuck with Logan. “He shook my hand, even with my broken arm, and made me feel like I was in good hands,” Logan said.
Dr. Wright and his team wasted no time. Logan’s injuries required two significant surgeries, beginning with an intricate 11-hour operation on his pelvis and left acetabulum — more commonly called the hip socket. He required operative fixation — a procedure that uses implants and plates, typically made of titanium — on both the front and back of his pelvis. A couple days later, Logan underwent a second, shorter surgery to address his broken forearm.
Twenty years ago, Dr. Wright said, 20 percent of patients like Logan died before they got to the hospital. Improved response and emergency-care measures across EMS personnel, ER doctors, general surgeons and other medical support staff have gotten smarter and more sophisticated. That means orthopaedic surgeons like Dr. Wright are seeing far more complex cases than they were at the start of this century.
“I won’t forget that day with Logan probably ever in my entire career,” Dr. Wright said. “It was a big day. I’ve been doing this for about 16 years, and I can think of about a half-dozen people we’ve had to spend that amount of time on in one sitting. It’s pretty unusual.”
Tackling rehab
For Logan, the physical trauma was immense, but the emotional toll weighed even heavier.
Logan was a college football player who’d weathered hundreds of tackles. He used to run five miles a day like it was nothing. As a trooper, he was used to physical challenges and a fast-paced, active life. Chasing suspects — often literally, on foot, in the hollers of Eastern Kentucky — was something he’d wanted to do his entire life.
Now he wasn’t sure he’d ever walk again.
“When you’re 24, and you have to have a nurse help you sit up, it’s hard,” Logan said. “I felt pretty down for a while.”
He valued their presence, though. “The doctors, nurses, everyone — they pushed me to be better, to keep going,” Logan said. He also found strength in the support and motivation from his friends and family. His daughter, Noa, born just three months before his accident, and her mother, Izabella, visited as frequently as possible during Logan’s monthlong stay in Lexington.
“That was the only upside,” Izabella said. “He got to experience a lot of things with Noa that other dads might not get to.”
Through his recovery, Logan found motivation in Noa. “Getting to be with her every day, watching her grow up, was a blessing,” he said during a September 2024 interview . At nearly one year old, Noa was just beginning to walk herself, and he marveled at the way she moved. “She walks better than I do,” Logan joked.
After a couple weeks at UK Chandler Hospital, Logan was transferred to Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital. On his first day, the rehab staff woke him up at 7 a.m. to start physical therapy.
“It felt like I was back at the academy,” Logan said with a laugh. “Just sitting up, trying to lift my legs — it was like starting from the ground up. I had to learn to walk again, write again, and even do math because of the concussion — and I never was good at math. They pushed me to the limits, for sure, and I think that really helped out a lot.”
Progress was incremental, but evident. Logan gradually regained independence, and by late October 2023, he was cleared to return home to Pikeville. He continued physical therapy at Pikeville Medical Center, and by the end of November was able to stop using a wheelchair and graduate to a walker, and then crutches.
Perspective
By mid-January 2024, Dr. Wright cleared Logan to walk again without the aid of any devices.
“His youth, his pre-injury strength and his good attitude are going to take him a long way in his recovery,” Dr. Wright said. “I’ve seen people who were a lot less severely injured not do quite as well, and I’ve seen people with just horrible injuries do great. I think it’s sometimes that power of a positive attitude.”
Nearly two years since his accident, Logan still doesn’t feel quite 100 percent. He can’t yet run like he used to, a limitation that’s kept him behind a desk instead of on the road patrolling. But he's regaining strength every day.
“You have to learn to keep your pace again and stuff like that,” Logan said. “You’ve got to build back up. I’m trying to build back up to a strong mile. I can probably give you a good 20-yard sprint right now.”
The accident took away some of his physical ability but gave Logan time to spend with Noa and family that he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten. Not being able to work in the almost year he was away from the police force deepened his appreciation for the job, and for the people of Kentucky that he swore to protect.
Audra, his biggest cheerleader, looks forward to getting those texts again when he’s finally able to be back on patrol.
“He’s living his dream,” Audra said. “No parent ever stops worrying, and I think the older they get the harder it is. I really didn’t know if he would ever walk again. But Dr. Wright — I will never be able to thank him enough. And the surgical team, the nursing staff. They were always right there for us. His care was unbelievable.”
