Tennessee State Running Back Survives Motorcycle Accident, But Has Part of His Leg Amputated

Jordan Bell is sharing his story of survival.

The 20-year-old Tennessee State running back revealed in an interview with the Tennessean that he was hospitalized last month following a deadly motorcycle accident — resulting in his left leg being amputated.

Bell told the newspaper that on April 4, he was driving on Interstate 24 with his friend Kenny Barton on separate motorcycles en route to meet up with some friends.

But Bell hit a pothole with the front wheel of his red Suzuki motorcycle, he said. He immediately skidded on the asphalt and crashed into a concrete wall, he recalled, while feeling his skin burn and hearing tire screeches. He laid flat on the road, eyes closed, refusing to look at his left leg he could no longer feel.

"I just feel like God had a hand on me," he said to the outlet. "I could've gotten ran over."

Mark Humphrey/AP/Shutterstock

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Four bystanders helped Bell, the athlete recalled, and after approximately eight minutes, an ambulance arrived and transported him to the trauma unit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Bell said he was able to faintly move his left foot after his first surgery, according to the Tennessean. But when his leg grew increasingly pale, lacking blood flow, the hospital performed another surgery.

He survived — but had his left leg amputated just below the knee.

One month since the accident, Bell is doing physical therapy three days a week, fully focused on returning to the field as soon as possible.

"I'm not going crazy, thinking about my whole future right now," said Bell in the interview. "But I'm (motivated) to make big chunks in progress (toward) what I'm focused on. And what I'm focused on right now is mid-May. That's when I'm going to walk and do everything myself. I'm going to be ready for my prosthetic."

Bell, entering his junior year at TSU, played nine games in his redshirt freshman season in 2018. In 2019, he played in all 12 games for the Tigers, recording eight tackles and a punt return for a touchdown.

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TSU coach Rod Reed described Bell to the Tennessean as "a leader by example and the type of player any coach would want in his program."

"When I talked with him (after surgery), he was upbeat," Reed said. "Obviously when you gotta come to grips with something as traumatizing as that, I thought he took it in stride. In the four times I've talked to him, he's had a positive attitude. His thing now is getting back to some sort of normalcy."

Bell's coach at Cane Ridge High School, Eddie Woods, told the local newspaper that his former player was in high spirits when he spoke to him just two weeks after the crash.

"I told him, 'God has a higher purpose for you and it's up to you to figure out what that is,'" Woods said. "He's a fighter. He's one of those guys that you root for all the time. He's going to bounce back from it. We're all going to be there to support him."