U.S., Palestinian student Hisham Awartani leaves Vermont hospital paralysed from chest down

American-Palestinian student Hisham Awartani left the hospital in Vermont paralysed from chest down, his family said on Wednesday.

According to his family in a GoFundMe campaign, “one of the bullets that struck him is lodged in his spine and has left him paralysed from the chest down.” they said.

His mother, Elizabeth Price also said that her son has a lot of physical rehabilitation to be able to get back to normal.

“He has what they call an incomplete spinal injury, which means that he can feel, but he can’t move the areas that are currently paralysed,” his mother explained.

“He is going into intensive rehab later this week, and we hope that that will help with his prognosis. … He’s resolute. He’s resilient.” she added.

Awartani is a 20-year-old Palestinian Irish American who grew up in the West Bank.

He speaks seven languages and is a teaching assistant at Brown University, in which he studies math and archaeology.

He was shot in a hate crime along with two of his friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, simply for speaking Arabic.