According to a story in the New York Post, an American aspirant physician was rendered brain dead when his friends forced him into a Louisiana lake even though they knew he couldn’t swim and then watched helplessly as he drowned. At Farmerville’s Lake D’Arbonne on April 14, minutes after pushing Christopher Gilbert over the dock, the group is seen in a startling video circulating on social media staring into the lake.
In the clip, a woman is seen going into the lake to search for the man before abandoning the rescue mission. Almost 10 minutes later, a customer at a neighbouring restaurant intervened and brought Mr Gilbert back to shore, just in time. The 26-year-old was brain dead when he arrived at a local hospital, and his other organs were failing, according to his mother, Yolanda George.
The medical student spent 72 hours on a ventilator and an ECMO machine which the mother said is a “dialysis for the lungs.” She said, “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 master’s last year in biological science. He’s preparing for medical school so for this to have happened to him … I was just devastated.”
According to investigators, his friends originally sought to dismiss the near-death as “horse-play.” The group even lied to the mother after he was rescued. “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 mother said.
After a while, another woman about Mr Gilbert’s age acknowledged shoving him into the water. However, none of the members of the group acknowledged that they knew he couldn’t swim, something Mr Gilbert’s family finds hard to accept, as per the outlet.
“Why would you push my son in the lake knowing he couldn’t swim?” Ms George questioned. In addition, the family is requesting that an arrest be made in connection with the terrible occurrence, citing the friends’ criminal intent in shoving him into the lake.
“To add insult to injury, no one from the ‘friend group’ attempted to go in after him after he was pushed,” the Gilbert family’s attorney said. Rather, Chris’s body was recovered from the lake by two courageous onlookers who heard the disturbance and are unrelated to him.”
The 26-year-old is responding to the medication, but he cannot speak. His lungs are reportedly only functioning at 20% capacity, and he is still receiving life support.
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