LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – A man woke up from spine surgery at a southwest Las Vegas Valley hospital to find out his apartment burned down and he lost everything inside.
Jaime Palomares says his apartment was one of the 12 that burned in a 2-alarm fire west of the Las Vegas Strip on Wednesday, but this story starts 12 years earlier.
Palomares says he was accidentally shot in 2012 while working at a restaurant in Mexico. Two customers got into an altercation and he was caught in the cross-fire. For the last 12 years, he says he’s lived with a bullet lodged near his spine after several doctors determined it was too dangerous to remove.
When a spine surgeon at Southern Hills Hospital agreed to remove the bullet, he says he was given new hope for the future.
“It’s been really, really hard, my life after I got my gunshot,” Palomares says. “That’s why I decided to get this surgery, because I want to get better.”
He says the surgery went well. But minutes after waking up he received terrible news.
“The first news that I get is, my house burned,” he says.
Palomares says he was stuck in his hospital bed while his apartment was engulfed in flames.
“I didn’t stop crying, I didn’t sleep the whole night, just crying and crying and thinking, ‘Why me?’” he says.
He says he lost everything in the fire, including his electric wheelchair, that he depends on daily.
“The wheelchair is the most important thing for me. If it doesn’t work, that means that I can’t do anything,” he says.
He is not giving up his dream to get back onto his feet. He was moved from the ICU to a rehab facility Monday.
“I really, really do want to focus to get well. I want to walk again, that’s one of my dreams, to start walking again,” he says.
Southern Hills Hospital gifted Palomares a regular wheelchair on Monday. He is still fundraising for an electric wheelchair and support while he recovers through this GoFundMe.
Clark County Fire Officials say the cause of the fire that cost Palomares and 11 others their apartments has been ruled undetermined.
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