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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Shot in the head by stray bullet...

Teen defies odds of survival

by

Jesse Ramdeo
1655 days ago
20210112
Wilma Marin, Jude Marin and Daniel Marin

Wilma Marin, Jude Marin and Daniel Marin

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.


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