Calgary man paralyzed in Barbados back home after three months
Property renovated for accessibility with wheelchair lifts, ramps and wider doors
CALGARY More than three months after a shooting during a Barbados vacation left him a paraplegic, Calgarian Ken Elliott has finally returned home.
It’s a home and a life that has been dramatically transformed since the retired city worker was shot during an attempted robbery Feb. 22 at a holiday residence in the town of Christ Church on the Caribbean island.
“It’s quite a variance from being in the hospital for 97 days,” said Elliott, 65.
After the shooting, in which family members chased off a pair of attackers, the man was treated in hospitals in Barbados and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., before being flown to Calgary and the Foothills Hospital on March 5.
While in Fort Lauderdale, a visit by his wife, Linda Brooks, was cut short by a bomb scare, while visits at the Foothills ended April 2 as a COVID -19 precaution.
“It’s been a triple-whammy,” said Brooks.
“But (Wednesday night) was the first time I was able to sleep without taking medication.”
After weeks of hospital food, Elliott savoured pizza for his first dinner at home.
“I’m making him steak tonight,” said Brooks.
Elliott’s Lake Bonavista home was reshaped by a nearly $100,000 renovation to accommodate his new life in a wheelchair. Upgrades to the four-level split — completed in one month — include two wheelchair lifts, ramps, removals of walls and a fireplace, bathroom alterations, widened doors and new flooring.
“The contractors delayed job completions at other projects to make us a priority,” said Elliott, adding adult children also selflessly pitched in to ensure the transformation went as smoothly as possible.
“There’s been some major reconstruction and a lot of help with it.”
On Thursday, Elliott said the couple is still getting the kinks out of one of the lifts.
Nearly half the cost of the renovations was covered by about $42,000 raised through Gofundme. That, and the efforts of physiotherapists and others have made best of an otherwise demoralizing situation, one whose origins Elliott still recalls vividly.
“When I was shot, I hit a coffee table with my head and the first thing I said was ‘I can’t feel my legs,’ ” he said.
“If I’d have known that would happen I would never have gone, but we’d had happy vacations in sunny places before that.”
The couple had gone to Barbados to enjoy a family reunion with an eye on spending time with Elliott’s ailing younger brother.
Six days into the vacation, two men armed with a handgun and machete barged into their residence just after Elliott, Brooks and family members had finished dinner and played a game of Scrabble.
During the 20-second melee, a bullet sliced through Elliott’s lung and lodged in his spine, injuries that required surgery in Fort Lauderdale.
While he has use of his arms, Elliott said has no feeling below his chest.
In March, police in Barbados arrested Alexander Patrick Alleyne and Travis Orin Campbell and charged them with unlawfully wounding with intent to do serious bodily harm, and firearms and armed robbery offences.