Black and white lines across screen

My son dropped his iPad, which resulted in streaks all over the screen. Whacked it a few times as many have described here, the issue changed to only multi color blocks across the screen. It has now gotten to the point where there are only black and white lines across the screen and when I move my finger across the screen, dozens of finer black and white lines show up.

I have opened the iPad up and reseated the cables but the problem still persists.

Will the screen run without the digitizer in place? Can a defective digitizer cause this issue or would that be the LCD screen that needs to be replaced?

I ran an iOS update without any issues just now and the computer detects it as well without problems so I'm hoping the board is fine and I'll have to either replace the LCD or digitizer. Thoughts?