PRAYERS, PLEASE!
Grandmother makes plea as boy mangled by dogs flies to NY for life-saving surgery
LINETTE Brown asked for the nation’s prayers as her grandson, five-yearold Mickele Allen, jetted off to the United States yesterday for life-saving surgery.
Mickele was accompanied by his mother Cherine Grindley, who the grandmother says has not been coping well with her son’s condition after he was mangled by dogs in his community of St D’acres, St Ann, last Sunday.
“We all are broken up at this time,” Brown said in a phone conversation with the Jamaica Observer yesterday.
“I feel really horrible. He is a good boy and I am asking everybody for prayers for him,” said the 62-yearold, who was the last person to supervise Mickele the day of the savage attack.
“When I got the news the day about what happened, mi end up fling the phone and it not working so good again,” Brown confided, explaining that she had been in touch with her daughter and grandson hours before their departure yesterday afternoon.
“I was talking to him on Thursday and he is getting on alright; the only problem is the head. When him talk for too long he starts to complain
that his head hurting him,” she said.
“But his mother is barely keeping up. Anytime anybody talk to her about him she don’t really want to go into it. She went back to Kingston yesterday. I tell her to keep the faith, keep courage, and put God in front,” Brown said.
The grandmother also revealed that Mickele’s twin sister has been crying for her brother since he’s been in hospital.
“She is not feeling so bright, but we try to encourage her. Whenever time we talk to her about her brother she starts to cry, so we try not to talk about it too much,” Brown said, adding that the boy’s father is upset that nothing has been done to hold the owners of the animals who attacked Mickele accountable.
“The father is quarrelling. Him say we take it too easy, because none of the owners for the dogs come and say anything to us. But by the help of God, my grandson will be okay. He was a good
little boy. Always did well at his schoolwork. All the while him say him want to become a doctor. I pray that he will be okay to live to see that dream,” said Brown.
On Thursday, Mickele and his mother were provided with emergency passports by the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA), as well as visas by the United States Embassy in Kingston to facilitate their travel to New York.
Yesterday, former CVM-TV General Manager and CEO Andrew Mcglone told Nationwide This Morning hosts Wayne Walker and Danielle Archer that the surgery will be done at Montefiore Medical Center.
“His condition is so severe that if he’s not operated on over the weekend there’s the risk that he may lose his life, so we had to make sure that he could get here today,” Mcglone told the Nationwide duo just before he boarded a plane at JFK International Airport en route to Jamaica to oversee arrangements to get Mickele and his mother on the flight.
Mcglone thanked the PICA staff and US Embassy officials for making it possible for the boy and his mother to travel.