Parents seek help to find son’s assailant

A sixteen-year-old boy from the Trial Farm area of Orange Walk Town clings to life at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital tonight while police try to piece together the sequence of events that has left him in a coma. Francisco Cawich was hit in the head by a piece of concrete survey marker that was thrown from a moving vehicle as he and friends stood on the side of the Northern Highway Sunday evening. The victim’s father, Juan Cawich, told News 5 this evening that his son was returning from his grandmother’s house and had stopped briefly to talk with some of his friends a short distance from home. According to what the father was told, the blue pickup, described by police as a Ford Ranger, drove by and made a U-turn. As the vehicle sped by the second time, the chunk of concrete was hurled into the group and struck Cawich in the back of his head, knocking him unconscious. Relatives of the comatose youth tell News 5 that they are appealing to the person or persons responsible for Francisco’s injury to come forward and speak with police. Those police are having a difficult time getting any of the young men who were with Cawich when the incident occurred to volunteer information. Whether the attack was an act of revenge for an earlier incident between the two groups is not entirely clear, but police have not ruled out that possibility. A check with hospital authorities confirms that Francisco is only responding to pain and that he is breathing with the help of a ventilator. His father and mother are taking turns at his bedside, hoping for the full recovery of their son.