MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Tuesday, March 30, 2021 is a day Kedine Blair will never forget.

Not only was it her son Ne-Sean Blair’s 16th birthday, but it was the same day he was shot and injured by a gunman at a shop in the community of New Hall as he celebrated the occasion.

Blair, who spoke to the Jamaica Observer last Monday, made an appeal for financial assistance with the hope that her son, who is now admitted at a hospital in the Corporate Area, will have the opportunity to undergo surgery overseas to remove a bullet from his spine.

“He got shot on his birthday. He was in a shop and a gunman came in the shop for someone else. He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was the only one who got shot,” she said.

The incident, which happened shortly after 3:00 that afternoon, has left Blair in a state of shock that her first of three children is laying on a hospital bed unable to move

Remembering the phone call she got shortly after the shooting, she said “A relative called me and asked me where I am, so I said I’m at work…I asked what happen, but she didn’t want to tell me over the phone, but I insisted. Then she seh, ‘Ne-Sean got shot’ and mi tun idiot same time,” the distraught mother said.

“I went over by the hospital and saw him lying on the bed and he told me what happened,” she said.

The child, she said, was transferred from Mandeville Regional Hospital to a Kingston hospital and has since been unable to walk.

The doctor, said Blair, told told her that her son might be crippled for the rest of his life, which she rejected and told him that she serves “a true and living God”. The doctor, she added, later told her “overseas has more equipment and resources to treat him”.

She said: “All now the bullet has not been removed; it is still in his neck. Him has a fever there that nuh stop bother him,” she told the Observer. “God ago heal him and carry him through. I see many things like this happen to people and surgery has helped. It is better we try than don’t try,” she said.

Her hope is to have her son flown overseas for surgery so he receive the chance to walk again.

“I have a relative overseas that would like for him to come up to get better treatment and a surgery. We believe God [is going to] heal him and put him back on his feet. We are going to send the medical documents overseas to see which doctor can remedy the case,” she said.

“The airlifting alone is expensive, based on what the doctor [local] told me, and that’s why we are on the go now to source funds to help him,” she added.

A GoFundMe account has been created to raise funds to cover air ambulance expenses.

Individuals can make donations at au.gofundme.com/f/lets-help-nesean-blair-to-walk-again.

Funds can also be sent to Jamaica National account number 2094335810 in the name of Kedine Wilson Blair, Mandeville branch.

Ne-Sean, a fourth-form student at May Day High School, was a member of his school’s football team.