On Wednesday 1st March 2006 I went out Gary for a drink to watch a football match on television between England and Uruguay which was being played at Anfield. Gary and I watched the match with some friends at Sizzles our local bar in the Gammonals area of Benalmadena. When the game finished I went straight home and Gary went to see his friend Chris at another bar saying he would be home within the hour. A couple of hours later I got a phone call from Chris to say that Gary had been stabbed and for me to go to the local Police station two minutes away from our apartment. At this point I did not think Gary had been badly hurt and that he was merely giving a statement to the police, but when my wife and I arrived at the Police station we were told to go to Malaga Universidad Hospital, when we arrived at the hospital we realised Gary had been seriously hurt when the porter rushed us to the corridor and doors of the operating theatres.
After a short while a doctor came out to speak to us and told us that Gary had been stabbed and that he did not think Gary would survive, but that he and two teams of surgeons would do everything they could to save Gary’s life. In the following hours my wife and I cringed with fear as porters kept rushing in with bottles of blood which we knew were for our son, we were frantic and just hoping, praying and believing that Gary would survive. We could not believe what was happening, earlier that day Gary was working with me and some friends in Marbella saving up for him and his fiancé Ashley to get married. They had been together for eight years since they were 13 years old and had a little boy Kieran who was just 5 months old and a couple of hours ago we were celebrating an England win 2-0. Before the game Gary had phoned Ashley as he did every night to say he couldn’t wait to see her in a couple of weeks when he returned to England.Another couple of hours passed and again the senior surgeon came out to speak to my wife and I, he told us that he had been a surgeon for over 25 years and that Gary had suffered the worst injuries from a single knife wound that he had ever seen. They had had to remove one of Gary’s kidneys. Gary’s liver, bowel, intestine and other organs were cut open and that they could not stop the bleeding. They were also afraid that if Gary did survive he could have brain damage as a result of the amount of blood he lost.
A little while later a doctor and some consultants came to see me and said they were seeking permission (I cant remember who from a special court or hospital governor) to give Gary an injection to co-agulate his blood, and because of the possibility of heart failure or brain damage I had to sign the consent forms to take full responsibility. The surgeon did say to me that without this injection Gary would bleed to death on the operating table, at this point I would have done anything to keep Gary alive and I signed the documents, some time later the surgeon came out to tell us the injection had worked and that at least gave the surgeons the chance to work on Gary’s very badly damaged organs.
At this time I phoned Ashley, she and Kieran were at home in Liverpool, it was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. To tell my future daughter in law that her soon to be husband and father of her child was fighting for his life and to get a flight over to Malaga immediately the doctors said Gary had only hours to live and they didn’t think Ashley would get here in time. My wife and I just found it impossible to think of anything we were numb, we knew Ashley and Kieran where in the flat on their own. Ashley couldn’t even speak how she was going to be able to make arrangements for someone to mind Kieran, and then book a flight to Spain. She was screaming down the phone “no, no, please no”. It was absolutely horrendous such a sickening feeling hearing my future daughter in law in such a state that she was obviously in and I couldn’t do a thing about it I felt physically sick and so frustrated.At about 11.30am and after more than eight hours on the operating table and 88 pints of blood, Gary was transferred to the intensive care department. By this time about 20 of Gary’s friends had arrived at the hospital (he was such a popular boy) later that afternoon Ashley arrived in Malaga, a friend of mine went to the airport to bring her straight to the hospital she was horrified and absolutely inconsolable when she saw Gary laying on the bed with machines and wires everywhere, numbers flashing and monitors bleeping constantly. That night we all slept on the floor of a waiting room.
The next morning the doctor came to see me and said we could go in and see Gary, we thought there had been an improvement but when Lee and I went in to see Gary the doctor told me they could do no more for Gary. His organs where starting to fail and that Gary had only half an hour or so to live!!We were all at his bedside till the end, Ashley had hold of Gary as he passed away, it was 12.30pm on Friday 3rd March my wife and I kissed him and they took him away. It was a feeling I simply cannot describe, there was my wife, myself, Ashley and 20 of Gary’s friends all of us in a state of disbelief and totally inconsolable, we don’t have any enemies only friends but I would not wish our experiences on any person in the world. We did thank the doctors for their tremendous effort in trying to save Gary you could see some of the doctors were visibly very upset and disgusted that one of their own would do such a terrible thing to an innocent person in a 100% totally unprovoked attack.
Gary had been dead half an hour when we were approached by a person from a funeral company in Benalmadena (a tip off from the mortuary porter for a little bung we’ve been told this is usual). After only a few minutes with this person from the funeral company he asked us for Gary’s passport. My wife had this in her handbag, as in Spain we used to carry our documents around all the time. When we asked why he wanted the passport he said it was in case we sold it and that he was acting correctly to comply with Spanish law he told us his company would arrange Gary’s funeral in the next day or two. After many meetings and phone calls we finally got permission to bury Gary in a niche (a niche is a hole in the wall just a concrete box not like a normal grave when the body is buried in earth beneath ground) in Benalmadena International Cemetery and that the expatriation of Gary’s body back to the U.K was not possible at that time. No one could explain why the judge was refusing us permission.
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