He couldn’t remember his fiance after a terrible CT accident. Now, he’s racing towards a comeback

Hartford Courant – Wednesday, June 4, 2025
By Lori Riley

The day of the accident, Samantha Angelillo remembered hearing sirens. A lot of sirens.

Her fiance D.J. Angelillo had taken his dirt bike out in the woods behind their house to show some friends the trails. D.J. had been riding dirt bikes since he was very young. But for some reason, that day in June, four years ago, he did not wear a helmet.

She got nervous and called his cell phone. He didn’t answer. Then his cousin came running out of the woods. There had been an accident. They needed to go to the hospital now.

D.J., now 34, married to Samantha and father of 1-year-old Ava, doesn’t remember that day at all. Samantha doesn’t remember much either, but she does remember when she got to St. Francis Hospital, she was shocked.

“When we were finally able to go and see him, I don’t think I was realizing at that point that he actually wasn’t awake,’ Samantha said. “It was very scary.”

So were the next few weeks, and months. D.J., who lives in Bristol, had suffered a traumatic brain injury. He had been ahead of the group of other riders and nobody saw the accident or what happened. He was paralyzed on his right side.

He’s come a long way in four years. D.J. is not only walking and talking and working full time as a tool and die maker and helping Samantha parent Ava, he decided he wanted a new challenge – to learn how to run again. He wanted to compete in the Gaylord Gauntlet, a 5K obstacle race which will take place June 14 on the grounds of Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford, where he completed his rehabilitation and still goes for physical therapy twice a week.

“I’m not an athlete,” D.J. said. “I’ve never done a 5K. I wasn’t interested (before). Now I want to prove to myself and my daughter that anything is possible.”

Samantha and D.J. were married in Oct. 2023. Ava was born 16 months ago.

“Looking back, I see a huge change, he’s improved so much,” Samantha said. “He’s come a very, very long way.

“I think that’s when I’ve seen the most change, since (Ava) was born. His attitude, his motivation, everything has changed. Everything, on a daily basis, he does it for her. He wants to be the best dad he can be for her. I’m thankful for it. I always wanted him to be that and I didn’t know if he would be able to. Seeing it now is really awesome.”

‘Always going forward’
D.J. grew up riding dirt bikes and motorcycles and raced dirt bikes as a teenager.

“Two wheels was second nature to me,” he said.

He doesn’t remember the day of his accident or anything until midway through his stay at Gaylord. “All I know is I crashed,” he said. “I didn’t really want to know why, how.”

“It was two seconds – of course, a decision he now regrets – not wearing the helmet,” his mother Pam Sherman said. “I say all the time, ‘You can’t beat yourself up over it, you can only be strong and move forward.’”

He didn’t know his family or Samantha when he woke up.

“That was one of my biggest fears – I thought he was going to wake up and not remember me at all,” Samantha said. “It was a long process from there; he had to relearn everything. Regain his memory. It took a few weeks to remember who we were, then once he remembered, it started to click.

“It was very hard but also very amazing to watch him grow and see how determined he was and how strong he was to get to that point and be able to get better every day. You could just see the fight in him. He didn’t want to be there, he didn’t want to be like that, he wanted to get better.”

He had to learn to eat, talk, walk again. When he was discharged, he wanted to leave on his own two feet, but hospital regulations dictated that he had to be wheeled out in a wheelchair. When he could get out of it, he did.

“I walked to the car and got in the car,” he said of his discharge. “I only had a shower chair for a week. I told myself I wasn’t having any helpers, no need for nothing. I live in a raised ranch, on the second floor. I had to do stairs every day. Laundry’s downstairs, car’s downstairs, I learned the stairs quickly. I had the railing and that was it.

“I was slow moving. I could walk but it was slow. But in my mind, I was always going forward, keeping my mindset that way.”

Two months after he got home, he went back to his gym to work out. Now he goes to the gym every morning and has been working out and walking on the treadmill. But after Ava was born, D.J. started thinking he needed to move a little faster to be able to keep up with his daughter when she got older. So in November, he went back to Gaylord and said he wanted to learn how to run.

“We were not close to any kind of jogging movement in November,” said Nicole Frey, his physical therapist at Gaylord. “We worked a lot on first trying to do a little bit of jumping. He has the strength, his brain just doesn’t know how to control his muscles to get that movement and to coordinate the movement.

“Over a period, we decided twice a week would get us to our goal of being able to do the Gauntlet.”

He ran at first on a treadmill with a harness and has made a lot of progress since then. On Wednesday, he ran without holding onto the treadmill for the first time. He has practiced running outside. He runs on a track on the weekends on his own. The Gauntlet is a little over two weeks away. He’s ready to tackle it. Samantha and his mom are going to be members of his team.

“I said, ‘Well, hey, if you think you can do it, I’ll do it,’” Samantha said. “We’re in it together, so we’re going to try it.

“I was proud of him because it’s a huge step and a huge goal.”

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