Tonight, 15 year old third-form SJC student Kassman Gill remains hospitalized in a critical condition. Doctors continue to monitor him closely and he is in an induced coma after his lungs collapsed.
And it gets worse - his father today told us that the doctors had to resuscitate him after he had a heart attack in his hospital bed. Here's his update:
Cecil Gill, father of Shooting Victim
"Over the weekend his situation deteriorated, his heart had stop beating for about 4 minutes and they had to resuscitate him and they got him back. Since then, he has been stabilized, he has been heavily sedated increasing the medication to keep the blood pressure up. Without the medication his blood pressure would fall rapidly and go back into cardiac arrest. The prognosis isn't good. The damage to the spine, he has no movement from the shoulder down. Even with recovery would be very difficult. I just would like to thank all those who are concerned and have sent out prayers, who has helped in any way. That doesn't mean that I am giving up, I am still hopeful, because my son did not deserve this."
As we reported, when he was shot Gill was heading to a friend's house who lives within walking distance. While he was walking on Magazine Road, a gunman rode up on a bicycle, and fired several shots at him. 2 of those bullets injured him, but one of them struck him in the back of the neck, and it has compromised his spinal cord. He is unable to move his body from the neck down, and so if he survives the injuries, he may end up paralyzed.
We asked his dad if there has been any information on why he was targeted:
Cecil Gill, father of Shooting Victim
"We did see some video clippings and we saw our son walking down on Magazine Road and at the junction with Banak Street we saw the shooter and my son looked at him and he rode right in front of my son and he rode through next to Matron Roberts onto Johnson Street and then went on to Cemetery Road and right on Cemetery Road came back around the bank and another right on Magazine. Now, my question if he wanted to shoot my son why didn't he shoot him then. The camera is limited to only the end of the bank, so we did not see when the exact shooting, only after he left off due to the fact that the Matron Roberts camera was able t catch him as he goes up. The poor images from the video we cannot say."
"Very decent human being, wonderful young man and for him to be struck down like this is act of cowardice and for those who continues to terrorize the society, we ask you to stop. We beg you to stop. You are destroying yourself, you are putting families through unnecessary burden, financially, emotionally."
The Gill family is asking for help from members of the public to cover Cassman's mounting medical bills. They have started up a GoFundMe and you can find a link to that at 7Newsbelize.com.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-cassman-and-family?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=chat&utm_source=whatsApp
