Aspiring Doctor Makes Recovery After Being Pushed Into Lake, Leaving Him Nearly Brain-Dead
Christopher “Chris” Gilbert, an aspiring medical student, was left nearly brain-dead back in April after he was pushed off the dock of a waterfront restaurant and into a Louisiana lake by friends, knowing he couldn’t swim.
According to local outlet KSLA, Gilbert was submerged underwater for ten consecutive minutes before a patron from a nearby restaurant intervened and rescued the 26-year-old.
When explaining what happened, his mother Yolanda George, told KSLA, “A friend of his called and she was hysterical crying. She told me that Chris has fell into the lake and he had been underwater for 10 minutes or so. The doctor [at Ochsner LSU Health] called us in and told me that at that time, he was brain dead and the rest of his organs were starting to fail. That we had 72 hours on the ECMO machine. It’s sort of like dialysis for the lungs and they had to put him on a ventilator.”
She continued, “I was devastated. I felt like my life had ended in that moment. My son is aspiring to be a medical doctor, my son is going to be a medical doctor. He got his masters last year in biological science. He’s preparing for medical school so for this to have happened to him… I was just devastated.”
The New York Post reports that the medical student has been taken off life support, but is still recuperating physically.
Nonetheless, Gilbert’s family is now demanding for an arrest to be made, and intend to hold the restaurant owner responsible for “failing to properly restrict access to the lake despite serving alcohol.”
Family attorney Claudia Payne revealed that Gilbert’s friends told police that he fell into the lake, but upon investigating further, it was discovered that he was pushed. “In the legal field, we characterize things the way we see fit. Of course, they are saying horseplay. We are saying that it was a criminal intentional push into the lake,” Payne added, noting that she believes the incident was racially-motivated because Gilbert is Black and the friends he was with are white.
“Had Chris, a Black male, pushed a white female into a lake, he would be arrested,” Payne shared, adding that the family just wants prosecutors to abide by the law accordingly.
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