Jesse Ramdeo

A young man, who was struck in his head by a stray bul­let and giv­en a slim chance of sur­vival, has de­fied the odds.

Daniel Marin has been sol­dier­ing on along the road to re­cov­ery propped up by prayers and his par­ents’ un­wa­ver­ing sup­port for near­ly a decade.

Daniel was with a group of friends at the beach when, on prepar­ing to leave, was ac­cost­ed by six peo­ple among them a women who at­tempt­ed to rob them,.

Dur­ing the fra­cas, one of the as­sailants whipped out a firearm which dis­charged.

The 18-year-old was hit in the head, the bul­let en­ter­ing the left side and ex­it­ing the right.

Marin was tak­en to hos­pi­tal while the per­pe­tra­tors were ap­pre­hend­ed a short dis­tance away by po­lice.

The as­pir­ing elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer’s spark was soon on the brink of fad­ing, as his fa­ther Jude ex­plained, “ he spend a long time in ICU and they told us if he do make it he’ll be like a veg­etable and I said no we be­lieve in God and he will do bet­ter and be as good as new.”

Marin’s prog­no­sis seemed grim, but his in­domitable spir­it and his par­ents un­wa­ver­ing faith were all he need­ed to over­come the odds.

He was even­tu­al­ly dis­charged and re­turned to his San­gre Grande home, but mere­ly a shad­ow of what he once was, blind and un­able to speak or move, Jude and Wilma’s seem­ing­ly daunt­ing jour­ney with their son had on­ly just be­gun, “ every­day it re­al dif­fi­cult, as you can see when I talk about it, I break down, to see in an in­stant how life can change and we out here take life for grant­ed.”

Marin’s will to re­cov­er was bol­stered by prayers from his par­ents, friends and wider com­mu­ni­ty.

“ I used to ban his body and lift him like a ba­by car­ry­ing him to church every day , every week­end pray­ing the lord will touch him and the lord re­al­ly bring him back.” Now, as he pre­pares to cel­e­brate his 27th birth­day, Daniel has re­gained par­tial vi­sion, mo­bil­i­ty and speech, ac­com­plish­ments which even med­ical doc­tors mar­vel at to­day, “the first time I saw some­thing I was like wow, the sun, the sun, I say wow...I am ac­tu­al­ly see­ing,” his fa­ther said.

Through­out his emo­tion­al and painful jour­ney, his par­ent has act­ed as his ther­a­pist, us­ing what­ev­er strat­e­gy pos­si­ble to help their boy back on his feet, from mak­ing home­made tools to strength­en his legs to us­ing the tele­vi­sion as a cat­a­lyst to get him speak­ing.

Their sup­port is why Daniel says he is in­debt­ed to his par­ents. “I wan­na say thanks for all the things they do, like I re­al­ly re­al­ly hap­py , when I come back nor­mal I want to do some­thing,” he said.

Jude and Wilma are now hop­ing good Samar­i­tans can vol­un­teer and help him with the ther­a­py need­ed to im­prove his re­cov­ery any­one in­ter­est­ed can con­tact 761-1062.