A Brooklyn boy who nearly drowned in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Lake is now in a coma and fighting for his life, his worried family tells the Daily News.
Rikeverns “Ricky” Joassaint is unresponsive but alive two weeks after he was pulled from the lake where he was cooling off with friends.
“Fourteen days. Fourteen days,” said Ricky’s father, Sergo Joassaint, counting the days his 13-year-old son has been lying helpless in a hospital bed. “I’m very sad. Every day I visit the hospital.”
Ricky, who doesn’t know how to swim, was one of five friends splashing around in the water just off East Drive near the Peristyle in the southern end of the park when he disappeared under the surface about 7:30 p.m. June 13.
It was his first time in the lake, relatives said.
Now Joassaint, 45, has to see his usually vibrant boy silenced and suffering. His son remains unresponsive in a bed at New York-Presbyterian-Brooklyn Methodist Hospital hooked up to a breathing tube.
Joassaint last spoke to his son in the morning before the boy started school on the day of the tragedy. Ricky was happy that morning.
The boy’s 16-year-old brother, Samuel, has been too distraught to accompany his father to the hospital.
“”Hopefully he’s going to be okay,” Samuel said of his brother. “We’re praying for him.”
“I don’t really go,” he added. “It will just hurt me.”
Ricky didn’t usually go to Prospect Park, preferring a park closer to their home in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.
“He doesn’t even go swimming,” Samuel said. “He played video games. He played basketball. He played soccer in school.”
The family has launched a GoFundMe page to raise money for Ricky’s medical expenses.
“He is a hard-working student in middle school,” the dad writes on the GoFundMe. “Two of Ricky’s favorite colors are blue and red. His favorite basketball players are Stephen Curry, Michael Jordan and LeBron James.”
“I am praying that he will open his eyes and regain…
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