Medical student, 26, is left horrifically-injured after being pushed into lake by friends even though he couldn’t swim – with group then watching him drown for 20 minutes
The family of a promising young medical student wants to know why no one has been arrested for pushing him into a lake and leaving him to drown.
A video filmed at the scene showed the group of friends casually peering into the water as Christopher Gilbert, 26, who could not swim, fought for up to 20 minutes to save himself at the lake in Farmerville, Louisiana.
His heart and breathing had stopped by the time customers at a nearby restaurant saw what was happening, dragged him to the surface and began CPR.
The group of friends told police he “just fell face first into the water” before someone admitted pushing him off the pier.
“In the legal field, we characterize the cases as we deem necessary,” says family law attorney Claudia Payne. ‘Of course they say horseplay. We say it was a criminal, deliberate push into the lake.”
Christopher Gilbert, 26, had graduated with a master’s degree from Louisiana State University
Video of the incident shows Gilbert’s friends casually peering into the water as he fought for 20 minutes to save himself at the lake in Farmerville, Louisiana
His heart and breathing had stopped by the time a spectator pulled him from the 50-foot water
Gilbert’s mother, Yolanda George, said she was alerted when one of the friends called her home.
“She told me Chris fell into the lake and was underwater for about 20 minutes,” George told Fox8.
‘And I thought: 20 minutes? Why was he underwater for twenty minutes?
“And she cried hysterically as he was airlifted to Shreveport.
‘And when my son got there, the doctor initially called us and told me that at that point he was ‘pretty much brain dead, and the rest of his organs were starting to fail.’
George ran to the center where she found her son clinging to life.
“I was devastated, it felt like my life had ended in the blink of an eye,” she said. ‘My son aspires to become a doctor, he obtained his master’s degree last year. My son is so sweet, the most selfless being you will ever meet, I was in terrible shape.”
Outside she found part of the group in the hospital waiting room.
The young scientist from Shreveport planned to enroll in medical school to become a doctor
His father and grandfather watched proudly as he qualified for LSU
Three weeks later, he is still on life support at Ochsner LSU Health
Mother Yolanda (center) and attorney Claudia Payne (right) told KSLA they want justice
“The group of friends came to the hospital and still told me the same made-up story that he had fallen,” she said.
“I heard at that moment in the ER that the sheriff called me and said, ‘Are you familiar with what happened?’
She said to him, ‘Yes, he was at the lake and fell.’
But he said, ‘No, one of the young ladies pushed him.’
“I thought, who pushed him?” And I started looking around the room, “which one of you all pushed him?”
“The young lady said, ‘I did,’ and I said, ‘Why would you push my son into the lake knowing he couldn’t swim?’
‘She said, “Well ma’am, I didn’t know that man couldn’t swim.”
The concerned mother then asked who the girl meant by ‘that man’, but quickly realized she meant Chris.
She added: ‘Everyone knows he can’t swim. He jokes that he can’t swim. Even when we went to the restaurant, the owner of the restaurant said that everyone knows that Chris can’t swim. He’s been coming here for two years and always jokes about it.’
The video shows that at one point a woman in a black bikini followed Gilbert into the water, but without returning with the drowning person.
Sergeant Ashley Rhodes of the Union Parish Sheriff’s Office arrived at the lake to find restaurant manager Dawson Foust desperately trying to save Gilbert’s life.
In his incident report he noted his conversation with the group of friends.
“They said they thought he was playing a prank by not coming forward right away,” he wrote.
‘Some members of the group did not know that Gilbert could not swim.
‘It was later discovered that the group was horse riding and one of the females in the group pushed Gilbert into the water, unaware that he could not swim.
“Foust told me it was about fifteen feet deep where he found Gilbert.”
Union Sheriff Dusty Gates gave a different account when interviewed about the April 14 incident.
“The party he was with started panicking or screaming and a person in the restaurant saw what was going on and he came out, ducked in and picked up the victim,” he said.
“We don’t know if it’s going to get worse because at one point he was off the ventilator, but two days later they put it back on,” his mother said.
“It was a collective effort of many people to make this happen, and that’s what we’re trying to work for here in Union Parish, to work together to make this a better place.”
Gilbert remains on life support in the hospital as doctors try to determine if he will ever recover.
“It’s still a struggle because we don’t know what to expect,” his mother said.
“We don’t know if it will get worse because at one point he was off the ventilator, but two days later they put it back on.”