By Latrishka Thomas
More than a decade after being shot by a senior cop – an incident which left him paralysed – a young man says he is still suffering excruciating pain.
Damion Watson, a 37-year-old Jamaican national, was shot by former Assistant Superintendent of Police, Everton Francis, in Jennings in March 2007.
After a legal battle, the officer was ordered to pay $250,000 restitution to his victim, who said that he was “shot for no reason”.
Watson, who remains paralysed from the waist down, told Observer his “legs have been [hurting] every day” since the incident.
He said the pain was so bad on Sunday that he was forced to go to hospital.
The man, who has been living in Antigua for 19 years, explained that he used the monies received from the judgement to build a house, but the structure was destroyed by fire four months after it was built.
“Nobody knows how,” he shared.
“It left me right back at square one,” he explained, as he made a call for government’s assistance to obtain a new home since he will be required to vacate his current dwelling within a few months.
Now, having to deal with increasing pain and discomfort, Watson said he sought “an opinion from different doctors and they say that a surgery can be done about it”.
An American doctor, he said, estimated the procedure could cost in the region of US$7,000.
To this end, a Go Fund Me account called ‘Watson Help’ was subsequently launched last week and at the time of the interview, the effort had raised just over US$200.
As the pain engulfed him during the interview with Observer, Watson pleaded for help saying, “I have been going through this pain for plenty of years and it’s really taking the best of me right now and I just want it to stop … I would really appreciate it.”
He explained that his prescribed medication barely takes the “edge off” the pain.