ORANGE PARK, Fla. — He was described as a modern-day miracle. For the past seven years, First Coast News followed Drew Kohn's story as he went from being in a coma to doing what many thought was impossible.
This weekend his loved ones will gather to celebrate his life.
Drew died July 26, 2024 just days before his 30th birthday in what police are now calling a hit and run crash in Jacksonville. It happened seven years after a motorcycle crash almost took his life. Instead of focusing on his death, his mother is choosing to focus on his life and his legacy.
“His faith was him living and being committed to his assignment in a broken body, Drew's mother, Yolanda Osborne-Kohn, said. "And only God could do that."
Drew Kohn was critically injured in a motorcycle crash in July 2017 leaving him with a traumatic brain injury, impaled lung and broken ribs.
“His body was crushed,” Osborne-Kohn said.
She remembers doctors describing just how severe her son's injuries were.
“He's brain dead," she recalled. "He's in bad shape. And then as the hours went on, it became did we want to donate his organs. Then it became like five doctors saying, you know, ‘You need to sign the DNR (do not resuscitate), you need to do this because this is not viable. And that's when I took the piece of paper and ripped it in half and said you're not getting a toenail or an eyelash.”
After months in the hospital, Drew was sent home still in a coma.
“'There's nothing we can do for him at this point. He's not ready for therapy," Drew's mother recalls doctor's telling her. "'We can't tell you that he ever will be.'"
"We had to fight insurance," she said. "We had to get appeals, because we couldn't get anyone to help us to even help him live because they said this isn't medically necessary.”
Osborne-Kohn said she relied heavily on faith.
“I asked God for more time, and I didn't know what more time looked like,” she said. “I was listening and asking God to grant my request, and He did.”
After 244 days in a coma, Drew woke up at home. His first words were “I love you mom.”
“He was young, 22 years old when that happened, so for him not to give up," she said. "He could have just said 'I don't want to be here. This is my body. I'm out.' That's not what he said."
With her cheering him on and the help of Brooks Rehab, Drew learned how to walk, talk and live life again.
“He didn't look at what he had been through. When you go through the progression of someone who was pronounced brain dead to not ever going to participate in the world that we know it to be… they're paralyzed from the neck down, they can't scratch, they can't cough, sneeze, to going to a special wheelchair that goes all the way back to a negative zero, then going to a normal wheelchair, then go into a speed wheelchair, then going to a four point cane, to a two point cane, to a one point cane, to all these different braces to walk. It was a process, but most people didn't see all the processes and the will it took and the determination,” Osborne-Kohn said.
Drew used his story to give others hope and strengthen their faith. He lived out what he told us when we interviewed him in 2020.
“My story represents never giving up hope," Drew said. "All things are possible when God is in it. I just want to tell others to never give up."
Learning to adapt to a life with disabilities, Osborne-Kohn says her son was a picture of courage.
“The fact that he wanted to fight that hard to be in a body that didn't work the way he wanted it to work,” Osborne-Kohn said. “The odds were more than stacked against him. He ran in a lane of impossible. He didn't walk. His story is a walking testimony, yes. But he biked through it. He surfed through it. He fished through it, and he took on the challenge head on.”
Seven years and one week after his motorcycle accident, JSO says Drew was walking on Collins Road near Schindler Drive when he was hit by a pickup truck around 5:30 a.m. That driver stopped and called police, but Drew died at the scene. Based on his injuries and witness statements, investigators now believe that there was another vehicle involved that initially hit Drew before driving away.
Police do not have a description of that vehicle, but said it would likely have damage. If you have any information that can help their investigation, call the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office at (904) 630-0500.
“I'm just a proud mom, and I'm a proud mom that's at peace," Osborne-Kohn said. "I don't have any grudges or grievances, not even of how he went out because how he went out is not important. God allowed it to happen. So, I got to line up with His will, and because I'm not God, I don't get to dictate that. So, I'm at peace with it. It's really hard to be sad, right. It's really hard to be. You know, he's free.”
She’s grateful her son got a second chance at life and grateful she got seven extra years with him.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen," Osborne-Kohn said. "Drew is the evidence. July 17, 2017, we hoped that he would wake up, and we put in a request. He did. And that's our evidence. And not only did he wake up, but he walked it out. So, the fact that he was struck by a car doesn't change the evidence."
The public is invited to Drew’s Celebration of Life, Saturday, August 10 at 11 a.m. at Zion Grove Baptist Church, located at 6317 118th St, Jacksonville, Florida. A Go Fund Me has been set up to help the family with Drew’s funeral and medical expenses.