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Anthony Borges, the 15-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas High student and immigrant teen who has been credited with saving the lives of several of his classmates, suffered a health setback last Wednesday when he was returned to the ICU for emergency surgery. “Shot five times, he was among the most seriously wounded of the survivors”:
“He’s doing OK now,” the lawyer, Alex Arreaza, said Thursday afternoon. “This kid is an athlete, and he’s obviously in very good shape. He has grit and is super tough — and that’s what it takes. He’s defied all odds, and he continues to do so.”
Doctors detected a possible abdominal infection and an ulcer in his small intestine from the impact of one of the bullets, his father, Royer Borges, wrote on Facebook.
“So they decided to intervene and cut that section of the small intestine so that my son’s life wasn’t further compromised,” he wrote. “They will make three or four more trips to the operating room during these coming days. They want to make sure they clean well and that all his organs are out of danger. I thank you all for your support and please do not stop praying for him and my family.”
Borges, “who used his body to block a classroom door” during the shooting, remains the final Marjory Stoneman Douglas High student to be hospitalized. His dad said that the soccer player is eager to leave the hospital and visit Spain, after Futbol Club Barcelona sent him a jersey signed by the team’s top players.
“When he was about to go in for surgery,” Borges’ dad said, “by chance I heard the voicemail, because I couldn’t receive calls, and put the phone on loudspeaker so he could hear the message. He was smiling so much!”
Borges faces a difficult recovery that is being compounded by the family’s mounting financial struggles.
While a GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $600,000 in public donations, the funds may only be used for his medical expenses, which continued to leave the family’s housing situation tenuous. That’s when local nonprofit organization No More Tears stepped in:
With Anthony unable to traverse the stairs of his family’s fourth-story apartment, it was clear the family needed a home on the ground floor, Ali said. “No More Tears is paying for first, last, and security deposit for the family to move into a house,” she said. In addition, the organization provided $1,250 for food and other needs, she said.
According to the organization’s Facebook post, Anthony’s parents have been unable to work since the shooting and have been unable to find economic assistance through other victims’ funds.
The family arrived from Venezuela to the United States less than three years ago, and in the time since Borges has joined the Barca Academy to play soccer, “one of many youth programs operated by the powerhouse Futbol Club Barcelona in Spain.” Now, it’s soccer that may help the young hero get back up on his feet again.
“Anthony wanted to get up and go to Spain,” his dad continued. “That’s always been a dream for him. When we arrived here, we had nothing, we started from scratch. But we were able to put our boy where he wanted to be. He wanted to play for Barca, and it was one of the greatest joys for my wife and I to see him doing that.”