As she drove to the hospital, Abby Streeter’s mind flooded with questions about her husband. He had called her from the ambulance, told her briefly about the logging accident, about the mechanical grapple that closed over his right leg, snapping his femur.

Is he alive, she wondered. Is his leg gone? Am I going to walk in and he’s not going to have a leg? Are they going to say they did the best they could but he simply had lost too much blood?

Half an hour earlier, from the bottom of a ditch, Casey Streeter had similar thoughts. About Abby. About their two young children. Not so much about his leg.

“I’m laying on the ground thinking I’m going to die in a few seconds,” he said. “Something just told me to fight and keep going.”

Next month at the Portland Expo, Casey Streeter, 28, will climb back into a pro boxing ring for the first time in 19 months. He will wear a black compression sleeve over his right knee and lower thigh, covering up lengthy scars from four surgeries he’s undergone since the August 2018 incident.

“I can’t even believe he’s at where he is now,” Abby said. “After sitting with the surgeon after it happened, he pretty much told me Casey would struggle to walk again, let alone be in a ring. So to see him now, running down the driveway and in the gym, and preparing to fight again, it’s incredible.”

On Nov. 9, Streeter will face Miguel Suarez of Argentina in a super welterweight bout scheduled to go six rounds as part of a card that includes Russell Lamour Jr., the former North American and New England middleweight champion. Another local super welterweight, Josniel Castro of Westbrook, is scheduled to make his professional debut. Three other pro and two amateur bouts are on the docket.

A GRUESOME ACCIDENT

Casey Streeter grew up in Gray but found a home at the Portland Boxing Club. He won four New England Golden Glove titles before turning pro in 2014 under his name at the time, Casey Kramlich, compiling a 9-1-1 professional record. On Aug. 1, 2018, that record seemed likely to remain permanent.

Streeter had spent seven years working as an arborist. Less than two weeks before the tragedy, he gave notice that he would start a new career at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham. On a Wednesday morning, with two more days left in his job, he and a foreman attempted to move a felled tree from a ditch in Yarmouth.

Standing above the ditch, Streeter hooked a chain around the tree trunk and was assessing the remaining length of chain when the grappler closed around his leg. Down he went, into the ditch. Out popped his femur.

“It shattered my whole kneecap and about three inches of my femur,” Streeter said. “The broken end of it, the part that was still attached to me, I watched it come popping out of my leg. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just … adrenaline kicked in. I grabbed the end of it and kind of pushed it back down.”

Later he would discover his femoral artery had been spared by about an eighth of an inch. On the outside of his leg, Streeter saw his calf muscle dangling.

“So I grabbed it and sort of put it in place where I thought it was supposed to be,” he said. “I knew I had to keep some pressure wherever I saw anything coming out, so I was just holding on for dear life.” 

Hearing the commotion, the foreman came running from the truck. He called 9-1-1 but because cell service was spotty, didn’t initially realize he got through. He ran to the nearest house to call for help. A grandmother with a nursing background emerged and brought a pillow for Streeter’s head, trying to comfort him.

When ambulances arrived, the EMTs soon realized they would need to cut a path to a neighboring driveway to carry Streeter out on a stretcher. He never lost consciousness.

Waiting for Streeter at Maine Medical Center was Dr. Matthew Camuso, whose four-year Navy service included a sixth-month tour in Iraq. He had administered to Marines during the bloody Battle of Fallujah.

Streeter reminded him of those Marines, Camuso said: Quiet, understated, selfless, motivated to get back into the fold.

Camuso described the nature of the injury as gruesome, “with a lot of devitalized tissue, and contamination of dirt, soil and grit from the site where he was working, but we were able to clean that out.”

On the positive side, Streeter hadn’t lost much in the way of skin, his pulse was good and he could move his foot up and down. Camuso said it was just a matter of getting the bone lined up properly and providing stability so the body could take over and heal the fracture.

“He needed a lot of hardware to put him back together,” said Camuso, who operated on Streeter three more times, installing two metal plates and 47 screws.

SETBACKS DURING RECOVERY

For the first three months, Streeter had to stay off his feet. While he was out of work, Abby found a job at a marijuana dispensary in Windham and Casey looked after the kids, now 2 and 4, at their home in Raymond. In November, a bone graft taken from his hip filled in a missing chunk of his femur. An infection had to be dealt with.

He was on crutches until Christmas, then began months of physical therapy. In April he returned to the boxing club, but a little too soon, as it turned out. The bone hadn’t fully healed and Camuso operated again in May to replace a broken plate and get the femur lined up properly, with a plate on each side for stability.

Streeter’s boxing background has served him well, Camuso said.

“Like a lot of boxers, he’s super brave, he’s super fit and he’s super determined,” the surgeon said. “He also doesn’t worry about things that might not go right. He follows directions, puts his head down and plows right through. That makes a big difference.”

Bobby Russo, who owns the Portland Boxing Club and has coached Streeter since his early teens, said Streeter’s biggest strength – his lateral movement and quickness – seems as good as ever.

“He’s running five miles now, he’s sparring, he’s doing everything he always did,” Russo said. “To be in the ring in a professional boxing match with no real problems with his leg is just miraculous.”

Outside the ring, Streeter still has challenges. There are nights he awakes in a cold sweat. There are days when “you look at him and he’s just not there,” Abby Streeter said.

He has a limp. He has scars.

Those won’t go away.

Still, she said, the Streeters are a lucky family.

“I will take Casey with a limp and scars over not having him here,” she said. “We’ll take every battle that comes our way, because that’s what we do.”

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