Lester Domínguez, the young man from Holguín who ended up in a wheelchair after being attacked with a machete in March 2023, broke his silence in a video posted on Facebook by content creator Noly Blak, and described in stark terms how his health condition is worsening without any solutions provided by the Cuban medical system.
In the recording, Lester is seen sitting in his wheelchair - broken and with a flat tire, the only one he has had since the attack - at an aunt's house in Holguín, where he is staying because there is no electricity in his hometown of San Germán.
"I need surgery because I have a compressed spinal cord and an inverted cervical spine, and that is gradually compressing the spinal cord more and is killing me," says the young man, who will turn 20 on July 1st.
At this moment, he urgently needs a motorized electric wheelchair, as his spine is compressing, and he can no longer open his hands or operate his chair independently, leaving him completely dependent for his daily activities.
Noly Blak urgently requested that someone abroad be able to donate or help with sending assistance, and he leaves Lester's personal phone number for those who wish to contact him directly: 54-19-99-63.
However, what worries the young man the most is the surgery that hasn't arrived yet.
Doctors confirmed in August 2025 that he was in conditions to undergo surgery. After that, the search for a missing orthopedic minerva began, then Hurricane Melissa damaged hundreds of health facilities in eastern Cuba, and by 2026, the collapse of the healthcare system—with a surgical waiting list of up to 96,000 people, including 11,000 children—has made the intervention impossible.
«I even went to get the tests done, and they told me they would call me, but no one has. I managed to gather everything little by little, with my own resources. All I need now is for them to set up the operating room and call me,» says Lester.
Recalling the attack, he describes how it all happened before he could react: "Straight, from behind, I didn’t even notice. They caught me on a corner when I was heading directly home. I was just about to turn the corner. I was walking with my phone in my hand and I barely felt the blow."
The assault was to take a phone, a Huawei that was in poor condition with a broken screen. The machete strike to the neck caused an incomplete C5 spinal cord injury, leaving him paralyzed.
Two assailants were involved in the assault: one of them, identified when Lester's phone was found buried in his yard, is serving a sentence following a trial in which the prosecution requested 20 years in prison for the attack plus an additional four years for stealing phones from other victims; the other took his own life.
The father of the young boy, Dennis Domínguez, filed a complaint on June 21 accusing the Cuban government of total abandonment: "The child has been without any kind of government assistance for over a year, and they say they support vulnerable cases and those in greater need; they should stop deceiving the people."
He also recalled that his son "is alive by a miracle", after overcoming mechanical ventilation, tracheotomy, bedsores, pneumonia, and other bacterial infections.
Noly Blak's video garnered over 109,000 views and more than 6,000 reactions, and it is the first time Lester speaks directly to the camera about the progression of his paralysis, three and a half years after an incident that took away his mobility due to a broken phone.
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