Jazz singer Gina’s comeback from horror car crash

Aug 14 2011 Sunday Sun

LYING in hospital after smashing headfirst through her car windscreen in a horror crash, doctors told Gina Pontoni she was lucky to be alive.

The singer suffered a punctured lung, a leg shattered in 20 places, severe facial injuries and nine broken ribs when a drink driver forced her car off the road, sending it plummeting into a ravine.

Yet none of those injuries were as heartbreaking as the news that she’d be lucky to ever sing again, her voice forever altered by her lung injury.

Undeterred, however, the popular Hartlepool jazz songstress has fought back from the brink – and she’s now on song for a fantastic comeback concert in her hometown, and she’s releasing an album too.

“I feel like I’ve been reborn,” she said.

Gina quit her career as a hairdresser and beautician to follow her dream of becoming a jazz singer 18 years ago, and her powerful renditions of her favourite 1940s jazz standards soon made her a sought-after star in shows all over the world.

She performed in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and New York at some of the world’s best-known clubs.

But a car crash in September 2004 brought her climb to the top to an abrupt halt.

Driving towards Manchester for a night out, a car veered towards her from the inside lane and she lost control of the wheel, plunging the car 60ft into a ravine.

She said: “The car flipped twice through the air and landed on its roof, and the next thing I remember is my friend waking me up.

“I’d smashed my head through the windscreen.