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US man has brain damage, mother says, after allegedly being pushed into lake

www.theguardian.com US man has brain damage, mother says, after allegedly being pushed into lake

Yolanda George, mother of Christopher Gilbert, calls on police to make arrest after incident in Louisiana in April

Yolanda George, mother of Christopher Gilbert, calls on police to make arrest after incident in Louisiana in April

The family of a 26-year-old Louisiana man who has brain damage after a friend allegedly pushed him into a lake despite him being unable to swim is calling on authorities to deliver them justice.

Christopher Gilbert’s family’s pleas came after he nearly drowned on 14 April while at a lakefront restaurant by Lake D’Arbonne in the northern Louisiana town of Farmerville.

Speaking to the local news station KSLA, Gilbert’s mother Yolanda George said: “A friend of his called. She was hysterical, crying on the phone. She told me that Chris had [fallen] into the lake, and he had been underwater for 20 minutes or so.”

George said her son – an aspiring medical doctor – was rescued and taken to a nearby hospital. She added: “The doctor called us in and told me that at that time, he was brain-dead, pretty much, and the rest of his organs were starting to fail, and that we had 72 hours on” life support, though Gilbert later regained consciousness and the ability to eat on his own.

54 comments

Twenty fucking minutes.
- How in the fuck do you let someone struggle against drowning for twenty fucking minutes?
  
  Almost everywhere I've been, waterfront places like those have at least a life ring or something.
  
  If you don’t know how to rescue a drowning person you put yourself in tremendous risk if you attempt to save someone. A drowning person will claw at anything to try and remain above water and that usually means the rescuer is going under with them thereby drowning them both.
  
  Well, if it’s not complete incompetence, it’s attempted murder.
  
  It wasn't for swimming, it was a location for eating. They probably had signs that said no swimming, or swim at your own risk. The restaurant is not responsible, but the person who pushed him would have gone in after him and saved him.
  
  Believe it or not, this is kinda a Louisiana thing. I moved to New Orleans and a story had dropped about a three year old drowning in a lake in front of their family. It turned out that nobody knew how to swim and they were genuinely too scared to get into the water and save their young family member.
- I didn't even know it was possible to bring people back from 20 minutes underwater!
  
  They last even longer if the water is cold. In the winter people have been brought back after spending several hours dead under the ice after falling through and drowning. I think the record for someone who made a full recovery is 17 hours.
  
  There's a saying in EMS, "They're not dead until they're warm and dead."
- What a great “friend”
a friend allegedly pushed him into a lake

No that was not a friend, that was a psychopath doing harm to others with no thoughts of consequences.
That action is assault, and should be punished as such.

EDIT: To those that defend the girl:
We know, She pushed him, and she didn't rescue him or even attempt it , and we also know she took a very long time to call for help.

He was 26 years old med student, so this is not children playing.

She pushes him in the water.

She fails to rescue him. There's not even anything about an attempt.

She waits a very long time to even call for help.

The family want's justice, and say "We are saying that it was a criminal intentional push into the lake.”"

So based on that make your own judgement on whether she is more likely to be a psychopath than not. She sure behaved like one.
- Not every bad decision makes a person a psychopath. You're diluting the meaning of that word.
  
  Shoving a friend into a pool or a lake is pretty common young person behavior. Odds are she feels extremely guilty now. That doesn't mean she shouldn't face consequences for what she did, but there is no indication that she is a psychopath.
  
  Teach your children to swim.
  
  Except for the part where the guy can't swim, and she shoved him in the water regardless. And didn't try to rescue him and took 20 minutes to call for help, and the family believes it was malice. These were not children playing, he was 26 years old.
  
  This is all in the article, and I find it astonishing that people feel a need to defend her, when she basically killed that man, by behaving irresponsibly on 3 counts. there is basically nothing of the original person left.
- It was probably one of those morons who said "this is how my parents taught me! Hyuk hyuk" and then pushed him in.
  
  People have tried that on me, knowing I can't swim, and I almost got physical when they'd "pretend" to push me in the deep end. It just makes me wary around them near the pool, because I can actually fucking die if I fall in.
  
  You might consider taking swimming lessons, my dude. Also, fuck those people.
This is awful, no doubt about it. Out of curiosity, is it fairly common to not be comfortable with swimming in areas like LA? My parents had swimming lessons and recreational swimming as a part of my childhood from basically day one, so I think I take that for granted.
- Swimming in lakes was not something I ever would have done when I lived in Louisiana as a kid. Pools are fairly common but gators make lakes pretty unattractive to swim in.
  
  oh sheesh, I didnt even consider gators. Around here you basically just have to worry about cottonmouths and leeches, I can't imagine having multiple different kinds of large predators to worry about. I can see how that would put a damper on the whole swimming thing
I don't like this Friday the 13th reboot
I'm shocked there is a lake with pedestrian access that is over 6 foot deep at the edge. Clearly a grown man had a problem with it.
- Really? I’ve never seen an intentionally shallow lake edge before. More often, I’ve seen restaurants on docks that hang out over even deeper water.

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