Ten-year-old boy recovering from plane crash injuries celebrates Eagles win at CHOP
After Eagles win, plane crash victim Andre “Tre” Howard III says, “This is the best day of my life.”
When Jalen Hurts found A.J. Brown for a touchdown, extending the Eagles’ lead over the Kansas City Chiefs, the mother of a 10-year-old boy hospitalized with injuries from the Northeast Philadelphia plane crash posted on Facebook: A.J. Brown kept WORD!!!!
Prior to Sunday’s game, Brown had promised to bring home a win for her son, Andre “Tre” Howard III, who suffered a severe head injury Jan. 31 when a piece of debris from the downed plane smashed through his father’s car.
“They’re pushing through this game like my baby Andre [is] pushing through trauma,” his mother, Lashawn “Lala” Hamiel, wrote on Facebook just after Brown’s touchdown.
The family watched the Super Bowl by his bedside in Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he is recovering from brain surgery. Andre and his family were decked out in green Eagles gear.
Eagles pennants adorned the wall above his hospital bed.
Hamiel posted several videos on Sunday night of the family cheering on the team and later celebrating the Eagles’ win. In one video, Hamiel films Brown’s touchdown from the television in the hospital room while screaming, “This one is for Andre. Let’s go Andre!”
In another, Andre, wearing a Saquon Barkley jersey, is sitting up in a wheelchair and his family rolls him down a hospital hallway, waving green and white pom-poms and shouting, “E-A-G-L-E-S!”
“Tre is so proud of the Eagles. He said, ‘This the best day of my life,’” Hamiel wrote on Facebook after the Eagles clinched victory.
During a news conference after the Super Bowl win, Brown said he will be making “a special appearance” to visit Andre in the hospital when the team gets home from New Orleans.
“The city needed this one, and we did it for you. I know a tragedy just happened,” Brown said.
Andre was riding in a car with his father and two younger siblings when the medical service jet crashed along Cottman Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia.
At the time, the boy’s father, Andre Howard II, was taking the three children to Dunkin’ on Cottman Avenue to get their favorite strawberry doughnuts after school. Andre was injured while using his body to shield his younger sister from debris.
Both his family and the Eagles have called him a “superhero.”