13-year-old boy paralyzed after freak accident while trying to escape wasp

A 13-year-old boy was left paralyzed after trying to escape a wasp while at a local swimming pool.

It was the first day of summer (June 20) in North Texas and Seymon Williams Jr. Camper, known as SJ, had begged his mother to let him go to the community pool.

But when a wasp came buzzing nearby, it was enough to see SJ panic and dive into the shallow end of the pool to try to dodge it.

Speaking to KTVT, mother Anya Camper said: “It was a normal day, you know. He came running downstairs and told me he wanted to go swimming with his friends.

“Basically, him and his friends were just playing wasp chase and it ran away and dove into the pool.

“He doesn’t know exactly what type of diving he did.”

The next thing SJ, an avid swimmer and football player, remembers is waking up face down in the water – drowning.

The mother of four continued: “He couldn’t move. He was literally drinking water. So it’s hard to hear him.

“He literally said to me, ‘Mom, I thought I was going to drown because I couldn’t move.’”

Fortunately, one of SJ’s friends, who initially thought he was “playing” while floating face down, rescued him from the water and called his mother.

His family then rushed to Children’s Health Dallas.

SJ’s grandfather, Louis Camper, believes they beat the ambulance to the Children’s Hospital in Dallas, adding, “We all met in the emergency room. And of course, it’s chaos, you know, because when they bring him in, there’s all kinds of people, you know, trauma specialists, you know, people, nurses.”

After a series of tests and an MRI, it was discovered that the teenager had fractured his neck and spine and was scheduled to undergo surgery the following day.

Doctors later explained that his spinal cord had been broken as a result of the injury and he may never be able to use his arms, hands, feet and legs again.

His grandfather said, “So we’re real believers. And you know, it’s not over, you know, until God says so.”

Anya said: “We pray and believe that God will do a miracle… that he will do a miracle on my son because he still has a long time to live.”

She also said it was “heartbreaking” to be “literally helpless,” adding: “He’s relying on me to fix it. And that’s one thing I can’t do. I can’t fix it. So it’s hard.”

A GoFundMe page has been set up by the family seeking to raise $100,000 to pay for medical bills, and has already raised over $60,000 as of this writing.

Speaking about the incident, the page, created by one of SJ’s brothers, said: “His friends said they thought at first he was just floating and playing.

“If one of his friends hadn’t realized he wasn’t ‘just floating’…my mother would have planned a funeral.”

Addition: “SJ was admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). The fractured bones were repaired.

“However, the spinal cord is the main stem of the body, and we are told that it is not repairable.”