WGNO: Split Second Hosting 2nd Annual Dependence Day Gala, May 31, 2019
Split Second Foundation • August 12, 2019
From WGNO:
This is a story of love and determination. It begins with a mother's love for her son in the wake of a life-changing accident in 2016.
Mark Raymond Jr.'s boating accident was only three short years ago, and it's taken a lot of hard work and support to move forward.
Through fierce determination, his mother Ronda Raymond helps her son through each day.
Read more
The last thing Mark Raymond Jr. remembers in those final seconds before the accident was standing in the back of his buddy’s boat at the end of a perfect July afternoon in 2016, and staring down into the waters of Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain. Then he dove in and instantly felt his forehead slam into the sandy bottom of the lake. “I couldn’t move and realized, 'I’m probably going to drown,’ " Raymond tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. “My last thoughts were about my mom and just praying that my friends would realize what was happening.” He was close to death when his pals pulled him out of the water and performed CPR. Two weeks later, Raymond awoke from a medically induced coma in a New Orleans hospital to discover that he’d fractured the fifth vertebrae in his neck and could no longer walk or fully use his hands. “I quickly learned that my life was going to be really different,” he says. “To call it a huge adjustment is an understatement.” Read more.