- November 20, 2024
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Palm Coast shooting victim Trevor Blumenfeld's family wasn't sure he'd ever open his eyes again, let alone speak. But they now have something extra special to feel thankful this Christmas.
“Trevor is a miracle,” Marti “Nana” Leavines said at a Saturday benefit for her grandson hosted by the Flagler Surf Club, at the Si Como No Inn, in Flagler Beach. “He has woken up, and he has complete recall. He does have some neurological deficits, but we have Trevor. The person that lives in that body is there and can participate in his own recovery.”
Blumenfeld has been hospitalized since the shooting, Leavines said, and doctors prepared the family for the worst: that he would not regain consciousness.
“They said 40% of his brain is gone,” Leavines said. “The doctors gave us little to no hope of any recovery at all."
The money raised at the Flagler Surf Club benefit — organizer and club president Joe Eddy was hoping for about $2,000 to $3,000 — will be used to cover the costs associated with Blumenfeld’s recovery. Trevor’s uncle Jimmy Blumenfeld is a professional surfer, well known in Flagler County’s surfing scene.
“The family has always helped out with the surf club from the beginning,” Eddy said. “All of the proceeds today will go to the cause. The family has a trust fund set up for his medical expenses.”
Blumenfeld, 19, was shot Nov. 4 in what Flagler County Sheriff's deputies have called a drug deal gone wrong. Deputies said four teenagers attempted to rob Blumenfeld of marijuana he had agreed to sell them, and one of them — 18-year-old Matthew Leslie Smith — shot him when he resisted.
Blumenfeld was hit in the arm and the chest, his grandmother said, and suffered partial brain death due to blood loss and a lack of oxygen to the brain.
But he’s now speaking — a few words at a time, and in simple sentences — and his family hasn’t yet discovered anything he doesn’t remember, Leavines said. He remembers dates and birthdays; he remembers his friends.
“He’s got the fullness of his memory back,” said Darren Kannan, a longtime friend. “It’s been a miracle. Every time we go, he’s better and better, in his mind, in his speaking.”
Friday night, Leavines said, the Flagler Beach Christian Surfers held a bonfire in Blumenfeld’s honor. He participated from his hospital room through a video feed from Facebook, she said.
Leavines said she felt her grandson has been given a second chance.
“There’s been a lot of prayer, and we’ve felt it, because everyone knows the flip side of this story: He wasn’t innocent in this injury,” she said. “But he’s been given a second chance. We all deserve a second chance. We’re all eager to see what he’s going to do with that second chance, how he’s going to pay it forward.”
