Five-year-old Samuel Lorenzzo still doesn’t seem to understand what happened at Creche Cantinho Bom Pastor, where he and eight other classmates were injured by an aggressor who invaded the place with a hatchet.
“My son says it was a punch”, says industrial mechanic Fabio Junior Santos, 42. A few millimeters ensured Samuel’s survival, who suffered a serious cut and cracked his jaw.
Of the children affected, four did not resist.
“The doctor said that the blow was close to his jugular”, said the father. “When I look at his face and see that wound, I know it could have been fatal.”
The boy will still have to undergo surgery because of the damage to his jaw. The orientation of the psychologists who assisted him at the hospital, according to the father, is not to question the boy about the episode, but to let him tell the stories voluntarily.
The child has reported details of the horror scene. “It will be in his mind for the rest of his life”, says Fabio Junior. “I try not to cry in front of him.”
During the interview, the father holds his son’s pet pillow, which Samuel named “Comfortable”. It was a gift the boy received at a church sleepover the family attends.
thud
The father remembers that Samuel used to go to day care while he was still sleepy. “He only wakes up at the school gate.” On the day of the attack, Fabio Junior left the boy at the scene around 7 am.
The crash came mid-morning, when Fabio was at work. “A friend of ours called me,” he says.
As he was close to the machines at work, he couldn’t hear much, but he suspected it was something serious. Afterwards, a friend showed the photo of the daycare that he had received on his cell phone. “My legs went soft, my arms went soft. I got really nervous, I started crying.”
Bewildered, Fabio ran away. Arriving at the outskirts of the nursery, there was a crowd. The street was crowded and the entrance to the school was already isolated. “We had to get out of the car and walk,” he says.
In a first cordon made by the police, only the parents passed. In a second, only whoever gave the names. “And they said not to enter the school in that second part.”
Nervous
Fabio says he was so nervous at the time that he could only say his son’s name, hoping to receive some information. “Then a teacher, Célia, came running and told us: ‘father, mother, Samuel is fine’. But I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t understand, I was upset,” she recalls.
Then, Fabio says that a policeman, who introduced himself as a psychologist – he doesn’t know exactly who he is – grabbed him by the arms and told him that he had to be strong and take care of his family, adding that Samuel was in the hospital.
At the hospital
Parents only saw the boy when he was taken to the room, already in the early afternoon. Only there did Fabio say he believed his son was fine, even though he had bandages on his face and neck. Samuel slowly regained consciousness.
“He spoke to me: ‘Dad, I’m alive. I’m hurt, but I’m alive,” he recalls.
The father says that this was something that the boy spoke to the entire medical staff throughout the time he was admitted to Hospital Santo Antônio, between Wednesday and Thursday.
The son received a series of gifts at the hospital, from Easter eggs to toys. Four survivors were all in the same room.
Everyone has been discharged, but Samuel is likely to have a surgical procedure next week, as one of the blows cracked the bone in his jaw.
“It’s still pretty swollen, so they’re waiting,” says the father. Even with pain in the mouth, the boy has been able to eat.
“He is a very active boy, I call him chipmunk. He is a very fast boy, ”says his father. Little Samuel has even returned to running around the apartment where they live. The feeling, cheers Fabio, is that the worst is over.
Future
Samuel’s family is from Curitiba and, three years ago, he came to live with his family in Blumenau, due to his parents’ work. It’s the couple’s youngest son’s first year at daycare. The father praises Cantinho Bom Pastor. “The teachers, the directors, everyone is very good with the children”, he says.
Fabio is grateful for the help of the day care staff. “All the teachers were heroes there. Everyone tried to grab as many children as possible, run into the classrooms and lock themselves in.”
According to his father, Samuel reports the teacher’s instructions at the time of the attack. “He said: I heard ‘pro’ (as the boy calls the teachers) Célia telling me to run, and I ran into the room. Then they closed the room and she put a cloth on my face,’” he says.
At the same time, he recognizes that it would be difficult to leave the boy studying at Cantinho Bom Pastor. “If I relocated the school to another location, I would continue with them, because they are very loving. But I think that neither teachers nor students… no one will have the brains to be in there.”
Fabio demands more preventive actions to avoid tragedies in schools, and also the strict judgment of the criminal who committed the attack in Blumenau. He also defends the classification of attacks as well as terrorism.
He is in favor of placing public security professionals in schools, a measure recently announced by the city of Blumenau, which also promises cameras and psychologists in schools.
“I am at the same time happy with my son, who is at home, but with my heart with the other parents. Because I have mine at home. But what about the parents who buried four children?”
The information is from the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.
Source: CNN Brasil
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