Cooper Roberts, an 8-year-old boy who was left fighting for his life after the Highland Park parade shooting on July 4, has been gifted a mobility bike thanks to donations through "Project Mobility."
Project Mobility is an organization that works to provide modified bicycles to improve mobility for individuals with physical disabilities.
Cooper was among the four dozen injured in the shooting during Highland Park's Independence Day parade that also left seven people dead.
The injuries Cooper sustained in the shooting have left him paralyzed, and presented significant difficulties in creating a new normal around a home that was not designed to accommodate his needs.
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In September, while sharing a letter chronicling Cooper's progress in the weeks following the shooting, she also detailed his needs for more accessibility in his everyday life.
"The transition to having Cooper’s extensive medical needs being addressed at home vs. at the hospital or rehabilitation clinic is a gigantic learning curve for all of us. And, now that he is home, Cooper has to deal on a daily basis with the sadness and grief of recognizing all the things he’s lost – all that he used to be able to do at his house, in his community, that he cannot do anymore … playgrounds he cannot play on, sports he cannot physically play the way he used to, a backyard he cannot play in the same way he used to, a bike in the garage that sits idle, that we used to have to fight him to stop riding each day… even much of his own home which he cannot access," the family wrote. "For all the love that he has come back to, there are so many painful reminders of what he has lost. There is no word that we know of that adequately describes the level of pain you feel or that Cooper feels when he sees his bike he can no longer ride or his old soccer jersey...heartbreaking, agonizing, despair – there is just not a painful enough description."
Thanks to donations from Project Mobility, Cooper has been given his own adaptive bicycle.
