Sister of trapped DC construction worker says he may never walk

Rick Massimo | rmassimo@wtop.com
Mike Murillo | mmurillo@wtop.com

July 5, 2021, 3:58 PM

The man who was trapped in the wreckage of a collapsed building in D.C. last week didn’t just think he was going to die, his sister told WTOP Monday – he thought he had died. ... Leonardo Moreto, 27, was rescued Thursday afternoon an hour and a half after the building he was working on, at 916 Kennedy St. NW, collapsed, trapping him under three stories of rubble. Fire officials said he was trapped against a beam, with about 8 inches of space around him.

His sister, Leidiane Guimaraes, said Moreto told her “he actually asked the D.C. firefighters if he was still alive.” ... He told his sister, “You were in the movie,” Guimaraes said. He added that the notion that people who are dying see their entire life flash before them like a movie “is not a fiction. … Everybody I loved came to my mind and in front of my eyes. … I heard this voice telling me to go back.”

Guimaraes said Moreto’s spine was broken, and that the doctors told her most people in his condition don’t make it to the hospital. If his spine had gone in the other direction, she said, his aorta would have been cut, which results in death in seconds.

Moreto went in for about nine hours of surgery and is still in the hospital. Guimaraes said a doctor told her it’s not likely he’ll walk again: “He doesn’t say don’t have hope, but don’t get so many expectations.” ... Her brother doesn’t know any of this yet — “He doesn’t really talk. He’s in and out with all the medications,” Guimaraes said.

‘They have no clue’

Moreto is 27, single and has no children, she said. He came to the U.S. from Brazil days before the pandemic hit, and when he had to decide where he would ride it out, he chose to stay with his sister and help with her daughters, now 3 and 2. He applied for a student visa, has been accepted at a school to improve his English, and hopes to pursue a master’s degree in civil engineering.

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Guimaraes has started a GoFundMe campaign for Moreto’s expenses.