A Canadian man is in hospital after suffering serious injuries in an assault while on vacation in the Dominican Republic.
Cindy Rowan, the victim’s mother, flew to the Dominican Republic from Edmonton with her husband and three children on January 9 for a vacation celebrating her youngest son Chase’s 18th birthday.
“I save up for about a year to for the trip, and we were having fun. I’ve always been to resorts. I thought they were safe,” Rowan said.
This past Tuesday, her boys decided they were going out for the night, leaving around 10:30 pm for one of the bars at the resort where they were staying in Punta Cana.
Shortly after, around 12:30 am, she got a call from one of her sons, who was frantic, saying he didn’t know what happened to Chase, and all that he saw was his brother’s feet up in the air.
“I didn’t understand what he was saying to me, so I asked him to come home to our hotel room,” Rowan said before receiving another call about 15 minutes later from Chase’s brother informing her that something was seriously wrong and an ambulance was called.
She rushed to the bar and met the ambulance, with some bystanders at the club telling her they had seen a man lift her son, Chase, up and slam him down to the ground in some sort of scuffle.
Rowan said her son suffered numerous seizures on the way to the hospital, and X-rays and CT scans revealed that Chase’s skull was cracked from the front of his forehead all the way to the back of his neck, and there were numerous other cracks all over his skull.
“It feels like I am in a dream here. Until they got all my insurance cleared, they would not touch my son. Three and a half hours later, they finally said they would do surgery,” said Rowan.
After two-and-a-half hours in the surgery room, the doctor informed Cindy and her husband that Chase had a lot of brain swelling and bleeding, having taken a large blood clot out of the top of his cranium. Due to his brain swelling, a portion of his skull had to be removed to make room for his brain to expand.
Chase remains in the ICU, and as of a recent CT scan done two days ago, the swelling has gone down, and he is currently sedated.
“We still don’t know the extent of the damage, like how much brain activity there is or anything, because they can’t move them too much because his head is still wide open under the bandages. I still don’t know to the extent what my son is going to be like.”
A GoFundMe has been set up for costs associated with Cindy staying in the Dominican Republic to be near Chase’s side, which, as of writing, has raised more than $6,000.
As for the person responsible for the assault, Cindy said that a nearby security camera was able to capture a good rendering of the suspect.
In a twist of fate, Cindy accidentally saw the suspect’s photo and recognized him from an encounter two days prior.
“I talked to him because he was another Canadian. I told them that I had talked to him,” Cindy said, adding that he told her he was from Nova Scotia.
“So they pulled up all the passports from Nova Scotia on the whole resort, they found him in their system, and he tried to leave early from his checkout date, and they caught him. They caught him at guest services trying to check out, and my son, a witness, and two security guards went in to identify him.”
She added that the suspect has been kept in jail, and a court appearance is set for Monday regarding the matter.
Her husband and two other children recently flew back to Alberta while she waits to see how long Chase will be in the hospital before they can get him on a flight home.
“I’ll tell you right now, I’ll never come back. Me and my husband both work. We’re not millionaires. I work for Canada Post, and my husband works as a construction worker; we’re not rich. I have credit cards, but you know they’re not high credit cards, and they have high balances right now, so I need help from people.”
Daily Hive has reached out to the resort where the Rowan family was staying at the time of the incident along with Global Affairs Canada but has yet to hear back from both.