Geisha Kow­lessar

The fam­i­ly of 13-year-old Amer­i­can na­tion­al Paige Welch has ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion against a sol­dier, six weeks af­ter the teenag­er lost her left arm dur­ing a boat ac­ci­dent in Ch­aguara­mas. The boat en­gine made con­tact with Paige's arm, al­most sev­er­ing it from be­low the armpit. The flesh on the arm was al­so com­plete­ly stripped leav­ing be­hind bare bone. Welch's aunt, Tri­na Aqui, dur­ing an in­ter­view at her Ari­ma home, vowed that one way or the oth­er, jus­tice would be served.

She said a crim­i­nal and civ­il suit against the sol­dier would be filed.

A livid Aqui said rel­a­tives want­ed noth­ing more than "see the per­pe­tra­tor locked up and the key thrown away." The tragedy, Aqui said, had left her niece phys­i­cal­ly scarred, emo­tion­al­ly en­er­vat­ed and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly marred.

Prais­ing the ef­forts of lo­cal doc­tors, Aqui said they "did their best, giv­en the re­sources and equip­ment avail­able." She said dur­ing the ini­tial op­er­a­tion, an artery was tak­en from Paige's left thigh and con­nect­ed to her man­gled arm to al­low blood to flow.

The teenag­er has un­der­gone eight op­er­a­tions since her re­turn to the US, in­clud­ing skin tak­en from her right thigh to be graft­ed on her arm. "Paige is very much afraid and in­se­cure as to what the fu­ture holds," Aqui said.

"She's in ther­a­py to learn how to bend her el­bow. A large piece of mus­cle tis­sue was tak­en from her back to ac­tu­al­ly cre­ate an arm." That pro­ce­dure left a scar run­ning from Paige's armpit to the hip. Aqui said if her niece did not make progress in learn­ing to bend the el­bow, she would have no use of the arm.

Paige has been con­fined to home, un­able to at­tend school and can bare­ly man­age to do things for her­self, in­clud­ing walk­ing. With­drawn from the world around her, Paige ex­pe­ri­ences sleep­less nights of­ten toss­ing and turn­ing in bed, her aunt said. "She's go­ing through a lot of tur­moil...At nights, I would hear her moan­ing and see her shak­ing in her sleep," she said. "She has not reached the stage where she wants to talk about it." Paige's moth­er Rac­quel, who threw her­self over her daugh­ter when she saw the pirogue ap­proach­ing, got a two-inch gash on her back.

"When the doc­tors lift­ed the flap of skin from my sis­ter's back, they ac­tu­al­ly saw her spine," Aqui said. She said the ac­ci­dent al­so left Rac­quel with a shat­tered left el­bow and very lit­tle move­ment in the back. "My sis­ter can bare­ly bend her back. In­stead of an el­bow, she has a met­al plate and five screws hold­ing the bones to­geth­er. "Her fin­gers can on­ly ex­tend to two inch­es," Aqui said. Say­ing that Rac­quel could not lift a cup of tea, Aqui said doc­tors told her sis­ter she would nev­er be able to hold her hand straight out.

Be­cause of di­a­betes, the mus­cle tis­sue has not be­gun to heal on Raquel back.

Aqui said it was on­ly when the tis­sue be­gan to heal that the bones would be­gin to heal. Both Paige and her moth­er must take sev­er­al dos­es of mor­phine dai­ly. Aqui said: "Paige has to take mor­phine every four hours. If she miss­es, or if a dose is late, she will be in ex­cru­ci­at­ing pain and starts to cry. "Dur­ing the last surgery, doc­tors had to give her oxy­codon be­cause the mor­phine had no ef­fect on her or her moth­er," she added.

Ex­or­bi­tant ex­pens­es

Rel­a­tives have shelled out close to $300,000 just to cov­er ex­pens­es at Med­ical As­so­ciates Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal at St Joseph, Aqui said. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, US$32,000 was forked out to have Paige air­lift­ed from Trinidad to Boston Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal in the US. "At Boston, ex­pens­es have added up to close to US$200,000 and they keep ris­ing," Aqui said.

Say­ing the med­ical bills had put a fi­nan­cial strain on the fam­i­ly, Aqui said rel­a­tives were plan­ning to seek the Gov­ern­ment's as­sis­tance. She said a lo­cal bank ac­count was opened, but it has gen­er­at­ed less than $3,000 in do­na­tions.

No as­sis­tance from po­lice

On the day of the ac­ci­dent, Aqui claimed she was told by two Coast Guard of­fi­cers that the sol­dier was sus­pect­ed to be un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol while steer­ing the boat. The sol­dier has nei­ther apol­o­gised to the fam­i­ly nor has he of­fered to as­sist fi­nan­cial­ly, Aqui said. At­tempts to ex­tract in­for­ma­tion from the po­lice have al­so proven fu­tile.

"Every­time we call the Care­nage sta­tion, we would be told the in­ves­ti­ga­tor is not there or he can­not come to the phone," Aqui said. "The po­lice and Coast Guard are very gruff and un­co-op­er­a­tive." She said the US Em­bassy had been re­lent­less­ly seek­ing the fam­i­ly's in­ter­est and had pro­vid­ed them with cer­tain in­for­ma­tion to as­sist their case.

What hap­pened:

?On Au­gust 16, a 28-foot pirogue dri­ven by a pri­vate as­signed to the T&T Reg­i­ment smashed in­to a kayak car­ry­ing Paige, her moth­er Rac­quel and her cousin Lance at Scot­land Bay, Ch­aguara­mas. Paige's left arm made con­tact with the boat's en­gine re­sult­ing in it be­ing al­most sev­ered mere inch­es be­low the armpit. The bow of the boat rammed in­to Lance's right foot, caus­ing his Achilles ten­don to be sev­ered.