Levi Wright died after life support was withdrawn, family friend says

Levi Wright, the 3-year-old son of rodeo star Spencer Wright and his mother Kallie Wright, who had been hospitalized in critical condition since driving his toy tractor into a Utah river on May 21, has died.

Levi died on Sunday, June 2, after being taken off life support, family friend Mindy Sue Clark confirmed to PEOPLE. “Levi was the absolute best little boy. It’s going to be hard navigating life without him,” Clark says.

“I can’t even begin to describe how hard the last two weeks have been. From the moment my phone rang the night of his accident to last night when I got the news that he had to go,” Clark wrote in a separate social media post on Monday, June 3.

“I don’t want to focus on the bad or sad, even though it feels like someone ripped out my heart and crushed it in front of my eyes. I want to focus on the many miracles we all witnessed during those 12 days,” she wrote. “Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people surrounded our best little buddy, prayed for him, and hugged Levi and his family with love.”

Clark remembered Levi as “the most perfect three-year-old there ever was.”

“He has brought so many people together. In such a dark world, we have seen light through the hands of a child. He is everything his mom and dad could have wanted him to be,” she added in that post. “I am so thankful for all the time I got to be his ‘Aunt Mindy.’ It is a blessing I can never top. I am also so thankful that on my last visit to Utah, even though I was so tired, I stayed up a little later to make s’mores with the kids. It was the only thing they had talked about all day that day.”

Kallie had already posted an update on June 2nd, saying that the family would “let him (Levi) go.”

“After several sleepless nights, much research, numerous conversations with the best neurologists in the world and millions of prayers, here we stand in the face of our greatest fear,” she wrote.

“Levi showed us just enough to give us time to do all of this,” she continued. “We prayed that this was him defying the odds and proving to us that he wanted to stay, but now we see that he wanted to give us time to come to terms with letting him go. I told you my baby was thoughtful and considerate, and I truly believe he did that for us.”

As for the impact Levi’s story has had on people around the world, she added, “During that time, he expressed humanity across the country, he brought so many to their knees and reminded them what really matters in this world. That gives the strength of the T-Rex a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”

“We’ll miss him every second of every day down here, but we’re convinced this is the best thing we can do for him!” she added. “We love you, baby beans, and I can’t wait for the day when you can ‘work the soil’ with me again!”

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Kallie’s announcement came a few days after she posted on Thursday, May 30, that Levi was back under sedation after “not being able to handle” coming off the medication.

“It was heartbreaking to watch and he is now heavily sedated until the next step,” she wrote. “The MRI is tomorrow. It may or may not show a difference from the first. We are checking everything we can and checking again!”

“Levi is our top priority in all of this,” she added. “We have multiple conversations every day with doctors, rehab clinics, neurologists, etc. to help him better!”

According to a May 21 statement from the Beaver County Sheriff’s Office, authorities responded to a 911 call about the incident involving the 3-year-old, later identified as Levi. The sheriff’s office said the boy drove his toy tractor into the river.

“Life-saving measures were administered at the scene,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. Levi was taken to Beaver Valley Hospital and later flown by helicopter to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City.

On May 26, Kallie wrote in a Facebook post that the family was “taking it one day at a time” after sharing that she was “shaken” by Levi’s MRI results.

“This is an experience and deep in my heart I pray you never have to experience what I do now,” Kallie, a mother of three, wrote at the time. “It’s a rollercoaster ride that you enter involuntarily and blindfolded, not knowing what’s coming next. You just have to wait and ride it out. We live it one day at a time.”

“No two brain injuries are the same, even if the accident was similar. No two brains recover the same way, or not. There is a lot that medical professionals don’t know, but what they tell you is based on legitimate medical literature and history,” Kallie wrote.

She also thanked the medical staff for the family’s ordeal, adding, “Whether it’s time to see if God gives us a miracle or whether it’s time for us to explore, learn and process all of this to make the most informed decisions possible. Every decision Levi’s father and I will make will be based on what we, the two people who know him best, believe he would have wanted. In all of this, he comes first.”