B.D.F. recruit on life support after midday march
War is hell, say those who have been in combat…and that’s one reason why in preparation for that unpleasant experience, military training is so rigorous. But on Friday a training exercise turned tragic for seven Belize Defence Force recruits, one of whom lies brain dead tonight at the K.H.M.H. News 5’s Jacqueline Woods reports.
Marcella Pop, Sister
“Just four weeks now he started training now he said he really wanted to join the force, but now instead of going there, he lose his life.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Today, the Pop family must make the agonizing decision whether or not they will remove nineteen-year-old Rafael Pop from the respiratory machine that is keeping him alive at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. The nineteen-year-old B.D.F. recruit collapsed while on physical training sometime after midday on Friday afternoon. Pop, along with six other recruits, apparently were overcome by the intense heat on a return run from Salt Creek Range at mile thirteen on the Northern Highway back to Price Barracks in Ladyville. Since then Pop has remained in a coma and the doctor has told the family there is nothing more they can do to help him.
Marcella Pop
“Well the doctor advise we that the time has reached to let us take him out, because he is done dead. They say he can’t do nothing again. We only waiting for our next sister to reach and see how he is staying now then they will take out the machine. They tell us he is dead, he has no control of his life.”
The family says as far they know, Pop was a healthy young man and believe he may have been pushed too far under extreme conditions. Marcella Pop says they have not heard anything official from the Belize Defence Force about what took place on the PT, but that they have been receiving unconfirmed reports through other sources.
Marcella Pop
“Well the family wants to find out what is the matter, how comes it happen. We won’t finish with this, we have to find out how it happened…He was healthy, everything he has no kind of sickness, healthy and everything when he went to join the force.”
“They say that they force him to run, and the last talk he do, he said he can’t make it again. But maybe when they hear that he can’t make it again, they rough it to much like how they like rough too much the soldiers…I no have no idea about what happen to him because we deh far, we are not with him, that’s why I have no idea what happen to him.”
Jacqueline Woods
“Nobody from the B.D.F. has come to the family to talk with you?”
Marcella Pop
“No, Nobody has come to tell us what happen to him. They only told we it was because of the heat. But I can’t believe that, because seven of them get better and he is the only one that stayed in a critical condition, I don’t know why that happen to him.”
Jacqueline Woods
“He never regained consciousness?”
Marcella Pop
“No, as he collapsed he gone and then they brought him to K.H.M.H. and no one knows had conversation with he, nobody knows what really happen to him.”
Jacqueline Woods
“A short while ago the doctor spoke with the family, what did he say?”
Marcella Pop
“Well the doctor tell we how his brains is not functioning again, he said it is only the respiratory machine that is helping him. He said he can stay for many days, he looks like he is alive, but he is not alive, it is only the machine mek him breathe. Once they take out that thing, he is gone, dead.”
Marciano Pop says his son, who is a former security guard, wanted to follow in is brother’s footsteps and join the B.D.F. Today he says they have a lot questions, but believes that because it’s the army that is involved he does not know if they will find out what really transpired.
Marciano Pop, Father
“It’s very hard, that is a big problem, oh yes if you start to question that, that not going to be done right now because you have to find out this and that. That’s why I say just leave it like that I just leave it like that. I just tell them just that they, it’s not that I am not sorry for what happen, I don’t know what they will do.”
Pop says on Saturday a group of B.D.F. soldiers came to his house and told him that one of his sons was involved in an incident and one of them suggested that maybe Pop may not have had enough water on him.
Marciano Pop
“Saturday morning he went to my house and tell me seh, Mr. Pop I come to make a report to you, one of your sons, the lee one just…Then on Saturday morning, Friday evening it happen, they tell me yesterday about four o’clock they fall down. When he fall down, they hurry to pick he up and they carry he to the hospital. But they tell seh maybe he noh got nuff water, maybe he noh got nuff vitamins or something, that’s all he tell me.”
Jacqueline Woods
“The officer told you that your son may not have had enough water on him or vitamins?”
Marciano Pop
“I can’t tell you which officer, I don’t know. But one of them B.D.F. get there and told me on Saturday morning right at my house. I can’t tell you if it’s an officer, a major, I don’t know anything just like that. But the B.D.F. get there and told me and that’s all I know.”
As the Pop family gets ready to say goodbye to their son, the Belize Defence Force has stated that they have the matter under investigation. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
