LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) – At 14 years old Shane Roof is already 6 foot 3 inches tall. He was gearing up his 8th-grade graduation from Johnson Traditional Middle School in Louisville.
Shane is athletic, hard-working, healthy and had no prior medical problems.
“It’s hard for me to walk out here to see everyone out here walking and my son's up there and he can't,” Darrell Roof, Shane's father, said.
Shane is now at Norton Children's Hospital downtown.
“That's what the hardest part to deal with. You can kind of compute in your head an accident or a car wreck but this was just like, a perfectly healthy athletic young man to now he's up there and has to have help breathing and can't move.”
What happened to Shane on May 13th is still a mystery.
“We were getting ready for a family cookout and Shane and I was doing yard work and he started cutting grass for maybe 3 or 4 minutes and he got my attention and said he didn't feel good,” Roof said.
Roof says Shane later complained of his legs feeling funny, but that wasn't all.
“Later on in the afternoon he starts breathing funny and that's when we got concerned because he wasn't breathing right,” Roof said. “What was happening was he was paralyzed from here down and the only way he could breathe was by using his neck muscles.”
By the time Shane got to Children's Hospital, he couldn't move his arms or legs.
“He hasn't had any movement what so ever other than he had a small reflect on both feet when they test him with a hammer,” Roof said. “We still don't have any answers we are hoping and praying that each day we may get something. They are telling us it’s either a spinal stroke or it’s a type of virus that attacks the spine. They don't even know which one it is.”
The family tells us doctors don’t believe this was a tick bite.
Support is now pouring in for the Roof's
“I'm a military member in the Kentucky Air Guard. They have been right here by us the whole way.”
Legendary UofL basketball coach Denny Crum even came to see Shane in the hospital.
Roof says it's unclear what the future may hold for Shane.
“They say if he gets any movement back is going to be like learning how to walk again,” Roof said. “He is definitely a fighter.”
A young man with a will to walk again.
Penn Station restaurant on Outer Loop is donating a portion of their proceeds on Wednesday to help the family.
There is also a GoFundMe page set up to help the family.