After four days, a 13-year-old Tamarac girl who suffered a head injury on an amusement park ride is improving, but still has a fight ahead.

Natashia West was hurt Thursday on the Magic Teacup ride at Boomers in Dania Beach.

"She's doing a whole lot better now, breathing on her own," her mother Yolanda Vaughn said Monday. West is recovering in the pediatric intensive care unit of Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital in Hollywood.

Her respirator was removed Saturday night, as was a metal rod inserted into her head to monitor a crack in her skull by the right eye. West, who will start ninth grade at Taravella High in the fall, is groggy but starting to talk, Vaughn said.

West went to Boomers eight days before her 14th birthday with her older sister Erielle, 17, and twin sister Tanashia, 13. She got on the Magic Teacup, which has cup-shaped seats that revolve around a central tea kettle, somehow hit her head and was taken to the hospital.

Accounts vary as to how the accident occurred. A report from the investigating agency, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, will not be released until later this week, said department spokesman Terrence McElroy.

Vaughn, who was not with her daughter at Boomers, said she was told by another mother who was present that West banged the back of her head on the center tea kettle. She also most likely hit the front of her head on the center wheel of the cup that controls the speed, Vaughn said.

Brett Petit, a spokesman for Newport Beach, Calif.-based Palace Entertainment, owner of Boomers, said the company's statement on the incident notes West was leaning extremely far back outside the cup. Petit said she apparently hit her head on another car, but she may have struck the center kettle or the control wheel. Petit said the operator hit the emergency stop immediately after the teen hit her head.

Vaughn said, according to what she was told, her daughter was not leaning back, but the spinning motion of the cups pulled her backward.

Petit said the ride passed its scheduled inspection in April, a random check in June 13 and another inspection the day after the accident.

Petit said he does not know how long the ride will be closed or what changes may come but said the Italian manufacturer, Zamperla, is considering "anything and everything," depending on what they find.

The ride in Dania Beach opened in April 2006 and is one of three such rides operated by Palace, Petit said. The other rides, which opened in the mid- to late-1990s, are in parks in Irvine, Calif., and Medford, Long Island, and have never had any problems, he said.