An 8-year-old boy, one of the youngest victims of the Highland Park shooting, is paralyzed from the waist down, according to a family spokesman.
Anthony Loizzi told CNN on Thursday, July 7, that Cooper Roberts was shot in the chest and sustained significant injuries that left him paralyzed and unable to walk. He remains in a critical condition where he is sedated and on a ventilator. According to Lozzi, he has a severed spinal cord but is in a critical but stable condition.
Cooper was shot during the annual 4th of July parade in Highland Park, an event his family said he loved attending. This year’s event went horribly wrong when a shooter opened fire on event attendees from the roof of a nearby building, killing seven and wounding many others.
But Lozzi said, “It’s going to be a new normal for him going forward. It seems (like) that he will have significant problems moving forward, especially walking.” Cooper wasn’t the only family member to be shot with his brother Luke suffering from shrapnel wounds and his mother being shot in the leg and foot. She has already been operated on.
Cooper, who is a huge sports fan and baseball lover, has had several surgeries since the shooting. Loizzi finished by saying that: “If you know Keely, she’s just a fighter and it seems like Cooper has that part of her in him because he’s fighting as hard as he can.” he news that 8-year-old Cooper, another of the Highland Park shooting victims, is paralyzed from the waist down only adds to the tragedy that is the plague of random shooting that has hit America.