He was shot in the arm with a 9-millimeter pistol, but tonight the prognosis for four-month-old Leroy Rhaburn Jr. is good as doctors say he will not lose his arm. But that is the only good news for the family as his mother Lisa Garoy will never walk again and his father and uncles are in jail. They had their day in court today and we'll tell you how that went in a few minutes...but we begin with the unfortunate turn of events for Lisa Garoy. Today her neurosurgeon Dr. Joel Cervantes confirmed that the 9-millimeter tore through her abdomen and hit her spinal cord.
Dr. Joel Cervantes, Neurosurgeon
"Miss Garoy's condition is a little unfortunate. She has a paraplegia which means paralyzed from the waist down and this is due to the fact that the bullet, when it entered the body, apart from the damage it did to internal organs within the abdominal cavity as such, caused a fracture, a very serious fracture, of the L2 vertebrae body and this caused the medulla to be sectioned. This explains why she is paraplegic and why she'll no longer be able to walk. Now the problem is that the spine is fractured and we cannot really fix this as such, we're going to try to give her all the best treatment we have at the moment but she will never walk again."
Both Lisa Garoy and her child are both still hospitalized at the KHMH. The child's grandmother Cynthia Gentle told us this evening that the doctors told her that Leroy Jr. will not lose his arm.
