Declan Ewart has had multiple surgeries since the weekend’s incident.
“I’ve been shot.”
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Three shocking words in a text message no parent wants to receive came in response to Paige Ewart’s message to her 16-year-old son, Declan, when she’d told him she was at work.
She had missed a couple of calls from him and assumed they were to ask if he could stay out later, like he often does when with his friends, but not this time.
Declan and his mum, Paige Ewart.
Declan had been with a couple of mates on private property at Ardmona at around 10pm on Saturday, June 13, when a 12-gauge shotgun accidentally discharged, shooting him in his right leg at close range.
Ms Ewart said she “dropped everything” and immediately began driving to the property, where she came across the scene: her son still in the back of the ute his friends had bundled him into, his mate still holding pressure on the wound site and helping paramedics, her father — Declan’s grandfather — who’d reached the site just before Ms Ewart, warning her to “not dare” look at her son’s injury.
She watched as two paramedics, a police officer and Declan’s friend held him steady while an IV was inserted, so he could be stabilised and transported to The Alfred hospital in Melbourne via air ambulance from Shepparton Airport.
The teen had attended a debutante ball the night before the accident.
Then, Ms Ewart headed straight to Melbourne to meet him, accompanied by Declan’s two mates who’d been with him at the time of the incident.
“I am just numb,” she said on Thursday morning after a harrowing few days in which Declan had undergone two surgeries, and immediately after he’d been taken in for a third, which was predicted to last eight to 10 hours.
The specialised flap surgery, which is more intensive than a skin graft, was to reconstruct Declan’s muscle and nervous system in his injured leg.
Already the family had met at least four surgeons who’d been involved with Declan’s recovery, but believed a bigger team would be employed for Thursday’s procedure, where they would be taking nerves and tissues from his left leg to repair his right leg.
After the surgery, which was expected to go into the night, he was to be be monitored closely around the clock by a team of four specialist nurses.
Any signs of infection could see him rushed straight back to the operating table.
While Declan’s spirits had been high earlier in the week after hundreds of supportive messages from family and friends and a visit from the mates he was with on Saturday night when the tragic event unfolded, he had grown anxious again ahead of the major surgery.
While Declan is a “bloke’s bloke”, his family says he is a very loving young man.
His grandmother, Barbara Iddles of Wodonga, said although people referred to Declan as a “boy’s boy and a bloke’s bloke”, that spending time with him by his hospital bed had reminded her of the heavy diesel mechanic apprentice’s softer side that his family knows well.
“He’s a very loving, loving young man,” Ms Iddles said through tears of pride for her grandson.
While it’s too early to know what the Toolamba teen’s recovery will look like, surgeons suggested that if it weren’t for the actions and first aid by his mates in the immediate aftermath of the accident, Declan most likely wouldn’t be alive today.
Declan and Ms Ewart, a single parent, will have many weeks, possibly months, in Melbourne after he emerges from surgery in a wheelchair temporarily, before his rehabilitation begins, where he will likely need to learn to walk again.
Ms Iddles said “a very dear friend of Paige’s” started a GoFundMe fundraiser to help the mother and son with costs associated with their temporary displacement and loss of income during Declan’s hospital stay and recovery.
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