Frankie Cox

By Zak Failla From Daily Voice

A Virginia father is lucky to be alive after a drunk driver barreled into him at highway speed while he was unloading his car, leaving him with catastrophic injuries.

Frankie Cox was struck on Monday, Nov. 17, by a driver traveling an estimated 50 to 60 mph in a crash so violent that the car rolled over his leg and launched him into a retaining wall, his loved ones say.

The crash left Cox with a severely injured leg and a fractured skull, and he is undergoing a recovery that doctors say will stretch far beyond his first wave of surgeries.

Frankie Cox

Frankie Cox

GoFundMe

Photos shared with Daily Voice show the aftermath — a mangled SUV shredded almost beyond recognition, a heavily bandaged and stabilized leg wrapped in surgical dressings and drainage tubes, and Cox in a hospital bed wearing a neck brace as machines and monitors crowd around him.

Frankie Cox

Frankie Cox

GoFundMe

Tiffany Carter, who set up a GoFundMe for his family, said Cox has already undergone the first of “many surgeries” needed to repair his leg. Doctors expect him to remain hospitalized for at least two weeks, with a long, painful rehabilitation ahead.

But the crash didn’t just break bones. In the days that followed, Cox also faced emotional and financial blows he never expected.

In a message shared from his hospital bed at LewisGale Medical Center in Salem, Cox wrote that he was “truly overwhelmed” by the outpouring of support that has carried him through the “hardest moment of my entire life.” 

Cox described having to stand in front of someone he’s always called “Baby” and ask him to sign paperwork that could have ended his life. “A plan to let mine end," he wrote.

Cox also revealed that as he lay in what felt like “months of darkness,” he received a phone call informing him that he no longer had a job — a devastating blow for a man who, according to Carter, is the primary caregiver for his 13-year-old daughter and his mother.

“Losing everything at once… the pain of that could have destroyed me,” Cox wrote.

But his message quickly shifted toward gratitude and survival. “My kids visited me in a hospital, not a morgue,” he wrote. “My family and friends get to see me, hear my voice, hug me — not watch memories of me.”

Cox said he now faces a long road of recovery, including learning how to walk again and, as he joked, to dance again. But he said the most important thing is simple: “Today… I’M ALIVE.”

He also addressed the driver who hit him and ran from the scene, leaving behind broken liquor bottles and chaos. “I choose to forgive you,” Cox wrote. “I choose to pray for you instead of hate you.”

Friends have been rallying around him. In a post shared shortly after the crash.

“Sending all my love and well wishes tonight to three dear friends who were struck by a drunk driver while unloading their car after a trip," Rob Huggins wrote. "I’m so grateful they’re still with us.”

According to Carter, funds raised through the GoFundMe will help cover medical bills, ongoing surgeries, rehabilitation and mobility needs, household expenses, and support for his family during his recovery.

“Frankie is strong, but he cannot do this alone,” Carter wrote. “Any amount you can give makes a difference.”