Teen breaks neck on homemade zipline in Big Lake, Minn.

BIG LAKE, Minn. (KMSP) - A homemade zip line hanging from a friend's tree house led to one teen breaking her neck in Big Lake, Minn. The 14-year-old hopes her story reveals just how serious injuries from homemade zip lines can be.

Amaya Pike now has to wear a halo, can only take baths, and will probably have to miss school while she recovers from a broken neck after the Sept. 30 incident.

“I grabbed on, and then I stepped off and that is the last thing I remember,” she said.  “I just remember waking up in the hospital.”

Amaya was injured after she gripped what appears to be a homemade zip line attached to a tree house near her friend’s house.  It's where Amaya was welcomed with two friends after leaving school that day.

“She landed right on her head and her whole body weight landed on her,” her mom Jennifer May said.

Friends told Amaya that she was passed out for about 10 minutes then walked three blocks to a friend's house to call her mom.  

“I could be paralyzed or dead right now,” she said.

Doctors tell Amaya she’s lucky.

“It was a clean break so it broke completely in half, she has a contused lung and a concussion,” May said. “She has to be in a halo for six to eight weeks.”

Fox 9 stopped by the house where Amaya fell to get the homeowner's side of the story, but no one seemed to be home. May said she talked to the young man who lives there earlier.

“He did say Amaya is that not first person to have fallen off of that,” May said.

While Amaya’s mom isn't placing blame on the young man or his parents, she doesn't want what happened to Amaya to happen to anyone else.

“She could've been paralyzed, she could've had brain damage, she could've died,” May said.

Amaya said her friend, the young man who lives at the home where she fell, did initially advise her against riding the zip line. However Amaya said she had no clue someone else had fallen off of it before.

Her family now is consulting with an attorney.