Father of slain teen still searching for answers

It’s been one year and nine months since 15-year-old, Cassman Gill was shot a stone’s throw away from his home in Belize City, and his family is still desperately searching for answers. On August 17, 2021, a lone gunman rode up to Gill as the minor walked on Magazine Road and opened fire on him. Gill, a student at SJC, at the time, was hospitalized with a bullet lodged in the back of his neck. Unfortunately, after fighting to stay alive for almost two months, the teen passed away on October 6. Gill’s father, Cecil, has been trying to put together the pieces surrounding his son’s passing at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, but has been met with roadblocks. Gill says that since he’s been provided with some medical reports from the hospital, he has acquired some heart-wrenching pieces of information. Today, the bereaved father told Love News that he firmly believes his son’s life could have been saved, if not for gross negligence by the hospital’s staff. 

Cecil Gill, Father of Deceased: “The problem I’m having right now is that I’ve been trying to get all of the records from the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital and I was able to get from the first day when he entered the hospital up until the 17th of September which I have here and I made a request. As a matter of fact I requested, I made four requests for the remainder of the records from September 17th until October 6th the day that he died. This is very important to us as a family because we want to know exactly what he went through on those last days because we were not able to see him because of the COVID situation they had stopped our visits. What we understand is that on the 17th of September my son asked to see me because he became conscious. They did not even mention it to me. Now I have that here that’s here and this that he asked for me.” 

Reporter: What type of pain did you feel when you read that? 

Cecil Gill, Father of Deceased:  “Man you don’t know because that keeps bothering me daily, nightly,  because I wanted to know what he wanted to say to me so I could just be assuming now thinking well he wanted to say this, he wanted to say maybe Dad I cannot live like this, you know maybe he wanted to tell me to take care of the girls you know? And so it hurts.” 

Gill says the reports also show that on September 17, Cassman slipped into a coma after his respirator failed, and he was left unattended for hours.

Cecil Gill, Father of Deceased: “On that same night I don’t know what happened but the respirator failed and the respirator had failed two times before that but apparently, I am assuming, that somebody fell asleep because it was like after twelve, one, when the respirator failed and they did not get to him in time you know? And can you imagine somebody has you tied up, you can’t move your hands or your legs and put a plastic bag over your head and start suffocating you that’s what my son basically went through. He can’t move anything. He was paralyzed from the neck down OK? So when that respirator went out he was trying to breathe, he was trying to live and nobody was there to assist him. So he got brain damage and went comatose as of that moment.” 

 Reporter: So based on these reports from the medical reports from the KHM you strongly believe that there was a lot of negligence in the way your son was treated? 

Cecil Gill, Father of Deceased: “Indeed. My son was removed from a room where they had a good respirator and put in a corner on a respirator that failed, that went down three times with him in this report. The respirator failed three times it’s here. So I am asking now, asking them to give me the remainder as of September 17th to October 6th so that I can see the progression of his deterioration  because of the failed respirator that sent him into a coma and he never did recover from that. He was coming up, all his vital signs were good up until September 17th that night when the respirator went down.” 

Our newsroom reached out to the Chief Executive Officer of the KHMH, Chandra Nisbet Cansino, who stated that the hospital continues to work with Gill, and to provide him with the information he has requested.  We will keep following his story.