Young man assaulted in Holguín makes progress in his recovery in Havana.

The young Cuban Lester Domínguez, who has been unable to walk for over a year after being brutally attacked with a machete during a robbery in Holguín, is "progressing well" in the rehabilitation he is receiving at the Julio Díaz hospital in Fontanar (Boyeros), in Havana.

According to his father, Dennis Domínguez, Lester is "very well health-wise" and is experiencing "more sensitivity in his body." He maintains movement in his ankles and knees and in a kneeling position, "he rises and lowers as if he were in a squatting position while kneeling."

As is natural in this process, the young man "gets tired very quickly" and this fatigue "leaves no room to enhance his performance." "We need to keep working so that he has more muscle and fat in his body," the father points out, noting that his son's diagnosis is level C5, incomplete spinal cord injury, and "we need to work on the upper and lower limbs and strengthen the trunk."

The young man's family hopes that he "continues to evolve for the better" and that "God continues to perform the miracle of restoring him along with the doctors."

On June 26, Lester Domínguez arrived at the Julio Díaz national rehabilitation hospital in Havana, after spending one year and three months unable to take a step. The family struggled to secure his admission to this center, and at one point, the young man asked his father to take him out of Cuba to receive treatment that could restore mobility to his legs. The father even considered leaving through Nicaragua, to avoid constantly having to ask relatives living outside the island for help.

The young man started rehabilitation at Julio Díaz on July 19 of this year, right on his 19th birthday. He did it with the hope of being able to walk in a couple of months. This birthday has been different from last year when he celebrated coming of age surrounded by friends but with a tracheostomy. He had a sore on his back that took months to heal, but it eventually did. This year, the progress is even more remarkable.

Lester Domínguez was 17 years old when he was assaulted in March 2023 for his Huawei cellphone. After receiving a machete blow, he was admitted to intensive care; he survived, but he has not walked again. His aggressor, identified as Adrián Grass Bermúdez, ex-boyfriend of Lester's sister, was tried in May of this year. Dennis Domínguez, the victim's father, feared that since the person who accompanied his son on the day of the assault hanged himself, they would now blame her for everything that happened and the aggressor would go free.

At the end of the trial, in which 20 years are being requested for Adrián Grass for the assault on Lester and another four years for the theft of four phones, the father of the attacked young man recounted that the person they saw on a bicycle with a machete, with remnants of Lester's blood, on the night of the fateful robbery, was Adrián. Additionally, the cell phone taken from his son was found buried in the yard of his house.