Help Wally Rebuild His Life After Tragedy

On July 6th 2024 our whole lives changed due to someone else’s actions. We went to the same 4th of July party we have gone to for years with friends who are like family. This year was a little different and there was a block party. We got to the party a little late due to Wally being at work. We had been at the party for a little over an hour when Wally had gone to help his one buddy down by the park. Me and my friend had gone to walk to the park down the street. Me and Wally were 100 yds from each other.

A young guy from a different party had said “ Hey! You’re about to hear a loud boom. We are going to be lighting off a black powder cannon.”. Not thinking anything of what he said. Me and my friend were closest to him and the device he was lighting off. The thing went boom and I grabbed her and we walked away from the park to head back to the party area out of fear of what just happened. As we turned past the tree line to go to the street that is when we saw the panic and chaos.

Wally was struck by shrapnel from the device that was lit. A bunch of people ran to get supplies. Everyone was doing everything they could to keep Wally alive. Wally had lost so much blood they had to medivac him to New Brunswick due to how severe this situation was.

Me and my friends got to the hospital and sat in the emergency waiting room for 2 hours with no updates. They sent us to the surgery waiting room and we waited for 3 more hours before we were met by the surgeon and got any news about Wally. The surgeon informed us that Wally was stable and alive. They informed us that most of his insides had to be removed and he is lucky to be alive. They were not able to close any of the injuries because he was to go back to surgery everyday the next few days. They also informed us that Wally was awake the whole time till he went into surgery.

They let us see him and he was hooked up to every machine they had. He was sedated for the first three days to let his body heal. For the first two weeks he had to be in the trauma ICU. In the first week alone he went under 5 surgeries. The following week he had 3 more. And the week after he only had 2.

He still has many surgeries still to come to keep the injuries clean. They do not know at this time how many he will need to have it all depending on his body and how it heals/ reacts. At this time they are not sure if they can reattach any of his organs back to the way they were. He will need to go to rehab to learn how to get back to the swing of life. 


He is far from going back to what will be his new normal life. And we don’t know what our lives hold for us going forward. We don’t know what surgeries he will need in the future. This fund will be used to get his medical bills he has now and will have in the future, make sure we do not lose our house due to losing Wally’s income, and to do some repairs to the house that will be needed in order for him to be able to come back home. We will also be using some of the funds to be able to get Wally a lawyer there is no guarantee that suing them could even help. At this time he is months away from coming home. We do not know when or if he will be able to go back to work. All of this happened just because one person wanted to build something that goes boom and convinced his son to be the one to light it off.

-Rachael