Idaho man hoped to bring back Peruvian items for his store. Now he’s fighting for his life

Fredy Inca Cisneros, 42, is a father, a brother, a husband and a business owner in Idaho’s Wood River Valley. In January, while visiting his home country of Peru, he was assaulted and beaten, his family said. He was left with three broken ribs, a fractured neck and spine, and a collapsed lung.

Cisneros’ accident left him unable to move his legs, said his sister, Katia Inca Cisneros, by phone. The attack also left the Cisneros family in Bellevue alone and wondering how to take care of him.

Kari Mendez, Fredy Inca Cisneros’s wife, works as a house cleaner in Bellevue, 18 miles south of Ketchum in Blaine County. Alone, she has been caring for the couple’s 8-year old daughter, Arlet, and worrying about how she will care for her husband once he is home.

“I feel very sad about what my husband is going through,” Mendez told the Idaho Statesman in Spanish. “This situation is a bit difficult practically. I am responsible for everything.”

Mendez is balancing working her cleaning job while also keeping the couple’s, Peruvian store, La Plazita Latino Market, open.

‘It was like a nightmare’

Fredy Inca Cisneros, now a U.S. citizen, moved to the U.S. with Kari Mendez in 2007, seeking a better life for his family. In Bellevue, he worked as a carpenter and construction worker before starting his own construction company. He coached children’s soccer for the last 10 years and played co-ed soccer himself. In August, he opened his first store, La Plazita Latin Market.

In January, he was on a two-week trip in Peru with his son Guillermo, 20. The two were scheduled to return to Idaho on Jan. 7 or 8, Katia Inca Cisneros said, but their flights were canceled.

Fredy Inca Cisneros decided to visit his mother’s grave in Huancayo. He left the cemetery and decided to do some shopping for La Plazita Latin Market. As he was leaving a store, talking on his iPhone, two people assaulted him and put him in a taxi, the Cisneros family said. In the taxi, the men took off his clothes and took his phone, credit card, ID card and cash. They then threw him out of the taxi and left him in a ravine, the family said.

Eventually Guillermo Inca Cisneros and the rest of his family in Peru found him in a hospital, alone.

“It was like a nightmare,” Katia Inca Cisneros said.

Despite his injuries, Katia Inca Cisneros said doctors in Peru wouldn’t operate on two discs in her brother’s spine because they worried about further harming his ability to move on his own. By Feb. 17, Katia Inca Cisneros and Mendez raised enough money to bring Fredy Inca Cisneros to a hospital in Boise.

Now Fredy Inca Cisneros is staying at the St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Hospital, but Katia Inca Cisneros says she doesn’t see him getting better.

“He is like a baby,” Katia Inca Cisneros said, through tears. “It is hard to see him like that. But what else can I do?”

Peru struggles with drug and human trafficking and other crimes, corruption, political turmoil and distrust of government. Some English-language travel guides say Huancayo, a regional capital at 10,700-foot elevation with 450,000 people, is relatively safe except for pickpocketing and bag snatching.

But Katia Inca Cisneros said Huanacyo isn’t safe. She said people are often targeted and killed if they appear to have money, which is what she thinks happened to her brother.

The Inca Cisneros family worries about next steps

Katia Inca Cisneros is looking for doctors to help her brother. She said most of the doctors he has don’t want to do more surgeries on his body in such a fragile state. But Katia Inca Cisneros wants to have hope that there is a doctor out there who can help her brother walk again.

“I know there are other things that can help my brother,” Katia Inca Cisneros said.

Fredy Inca Cisneros has a therapist who has been working to help him exercise and move his limbs, Katia Inca Cisneros said.

Katia Inca Cisneros Inca also worries about their ability to pay for the care Freddy Inca Cisneros will need.

“We don’t have money,” Katia Inca Cisneros said. She also runs a cleaning service but has had to pay workers from Fredy Inca Cisneros’s construction company who haven’t had work in the last few months.

Both Katia Inca Cisneros and Kari Mendez worry about how they will cope financially once Fredy Inca Cisneros Inca returns home to Bellevue in two to three weeks.

“Who is going to take care of my brother at the house?” Katia Inca Cisneros Inca said. “Who is going to change the catheter? His bedroom is on the second floor, and there is only a little bathroom on the first floor. How is he going to survive? It is going to be more stressful for him.”

Mendez also wonders how they can make sure Fredy Inca Cisneros is comfortable and taken care of at home.

“Here at home we don’t have the necessary things for him,” she said in Spanish. “We don’t have a ramp for the wheelchair or the necessary bathroom.”

‘A miracle can happen’

Both women hope that he will recover.

“I have faith and hope that a miracle can happen,” Katia Inca Cisneros said.

The family is considering moving Fredy Inca Cisneros to another hospital in Utah once he is discharged from rehab.

“Sometimes I can’t accept it, but I say ‘What can i do?’” Kari Mendez said. “I mean, it is part of life, it’s what God wanted.”

The family is rasing funds to help pay for Fredy Inca Cisneros’s medical bills. The link to the family’s Go Fund Me is: gofundme.com/f/local-bellevue-resident-kidnaped-and-left-for-dead.

These foreign workers have some of the hardest jobs in Idaho. Are they mistreated, too?

A Boise man intentionally struck and killed a woman with his car. He was just sentenced