The medical student spent 72 hours on a ventilator and an ECMO machine.
An aspiring doctor from the United States was left brain dead after his friends pushed him into a lake in Louisiana despite knowing he couldn’t swim and then watched helplessly as he drowned, as per a report in the New York Post. A shocking video that is making rounds on social media shows the group staring into the lake minutes after pushing Christopher Gilbert over the dock at Lake D’Arbonne in Farmerville on April 14.
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.
The lawyer representing the Gilbert family added, “To add insult to injury, after pushing him, no one from the ‘friend group’ attempted to go in after him. Instead, two brave bystanders, who have no relationship to Chris, heard commotion and retrieved his body from the lake.”
Although the 26-year-old is responding to the treatment, he is unable to speak. He is still on life support and his lungs are said to be at 20 per cent capacity.