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.
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
You worry about those too. I definitely recall when my mom thought my brothers were playing a prank on her and had put a fake snake in the house. Nope. It was a real water moccasin (cottonmouth). I did not go in bodies of water I could not see at least a few feet down in which meant I only went in pools.