Cuban shot by police on June 11: "Without family in the US I would have died"

A Cuban who was shot by police during the protests on July 11, 2021, stated that if he did not have family in the United States, he would have died.

Osiris José Puerto Terry, a self-employed person living in the Diez de Octubre municipality, in Havana, has a huge scar on his abdomen that was left after the operation to remove two bullets that almost killed him that day.

More than once he has said that he did not participate in the demonstrations, but rather that he was shot when he tried to get home. Six officers fired three shots at him: "the first was in the head but it didn't hit me, the second hit me in the shin and when I fell to the ground the third shot hit me in the back," he told the agency.CubaNet.

Puerto Terry was treated at the Calixto García hospital, where one of the bullets was removed, the other is still lodged in his back.

"A year and eight months lying in bed, spending money on medications, because they didn't have medications in my polyclinic. Thanks to my father in the United States, thanks to my sister, I was able to close the wound, because if I didn't have that family on my side there, who helped me, I would have died," he explained.

In all this time, he has not stoppeddemand that financial compensation be given for the damages suffered, but the Military Prosecutor's Office rejected their claim and certified that the officers' actions did not constitute a crime because "they acted in the performance of a duty."

"They decided not to compensate me because the officers who fired the three shots at me were doing their duty and that was the order they had," he stressed.

Despite this, he assures that he will not stop asking for the injustice that was committed against him, because "if they had killed me, they would have said that they killed a criminal," he said.

Puerto Terry's fight for justice put him in the crosshairs of State Security.

On crutches and almost unable to walk, he had to go four times to the investigation center of the Ministry of the Interior at 100 and Aldabó, to Tulipán and Boyeros and to the Military Prosecutor's Office.

Weekly he must appear with his wife at the police unit in his neighborhood to sign an agreement stating that he will not get involved in politics. Furthermore, every time State Security determines, he has to spend three or four days without leaving the house.