He had dreams of being a doctor. Now, he is barely alive.
On what began as an evening with friends, Christopher Gilbert, 26, was pushed into a Louisiana lake by friends who knew he could not swim, according to the New York Post. The aspiring medical student remained underwater for about 10 minutes before a stranger came to save him as his friends looked on.
The incident took place at Lake D’Arbonne in Farmerville on April 14.
“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,” said Yolanda George, the victim’s mother, according to KSLA.
“The doctor 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.”
When she saw her son, “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,” she said,
She cannot believe this started with friends.
“Why would you push my son in the lake knowing couldn’t swim?” George asked.
Gilbert did not die, but weeks after the incident he has a long road to travel. He can respond cognitively but is unable to speak.
Should the friends face punishment?
“The amount of work that the machines are doing on his behalf is constant. His lungs are said to be at 20 percent. His status doesn’t really get better; it’s just different,” said attorney Claudia Payne, who represents the family.
Video from the scene showed several individuals looking into the water, but none sought to enter it.
According to the Lincoln Parish Journal, a police report from the Union Parish Sheriff’s Office said Gilbert’s friends first said Gilbert fell in face first and later admitted pushing him in in what was called “horse play.”
“What was initially told to officers of Farmerville Police Department was that Chris fell on his own into Lake D’arbonne,” Payne wrote in a letter to authorities asking for criminal charges to be brought.
“However, later on that night an individual within the ‘friend’ group, a white female, who we believe to be around the same age as Chris, admitted to pushing him into the water,” she wrote.
“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.”
The report said that Gilbert was found in 15 feet of water by one bystander and that another bystander assisted Sgt. Ashley Rhodes in administering CPR until the arrival of first responders.
