An aspiring doctor who was pushed into a Louisiana lake by friends who claimed they didn’t know he couldn’t swim has made a remarkable recovery – and now his family plans legal action over the near-fatal incident. The Post reported that.
Family lawyer Claudia Payne said that less than a month after doctors diagnosed Christopher Gilbert as effectively “brain dead” and placed him on life support, he was able to talk to his family and eat. It is said that it has also restarted.
The 26-year-old has since been taken off life support, but is still recovering physically and is dealing with memory loss, Payne told the Post.
Gilbert was allegedly pushed off the shore by a friend at a Farmerville restaurant on April 14, after which he spent about 10 minutes underwater, but his friends inexplicably failed to pull him out of the lake. did.
He might have died if it hadn’t been for the heroic efforts of Dawson Faust, a 20-something restaurant patron not related to the group who jumped into the water to rescue him.
Gribert’s family is now planning a civil lawsuit against the restaurant, alleging it served alcohol but failed to properly restrict access to the lake.
The restaurant, identified in the report as Rhett’s Tales and Shells, declined to comment when contacted by The Post.
His family is also calling for the arrest of the woman who allegedly pushed Gilbert, but they believe police may be overlooking his friends because they are all white and Chris is black. .
“If Chris, a black man, had pushed a white woman into the lake, he would have been arrested,” Payne said, adding that the family doesn’t want mass persecution of women, but just the letter of the law. Ta. Followed accordingly.
“I have represented alleged criminals for whom there was little evidence that led to their arrest,” Payne said.
Farmerville Police declined to comment on the incident, citing the ongoing investigation.
Exactly what happened on the day Gilbert fell into the ocean remains unclear. Gilbert’s friends initially told his mother, Yolanda George, that her son had fallen in, but later changed their story and admitted to pushing her son while they were “playing horses.”
Video from that day appears to show Gilbert’s friends standing around doing nothing while he was in the water.
Friends also claimed they didn’t know Gilbert couldn’t swim, something his family denies.
“Everyone knows Chris can’t swim,” says his mother told KSLA. “He’s always joking about it.”
