Jesse moved to New York City to be a high-fashion model, but six months later, a night out with friends turned into a nightmare that changed his life forever.
After having two or three drinks with friends at a bar, Jesse walked to Penn Station to take a train home. Along the way, he says he started losing his motor skills, his vision blurred, and it became difficult to talk. On the platform, he says he started to black out and began to panic. He leaned up against the door of a stopped train to try to steady himself.
“It was just like the lights went out,” Jesse recalls. “The next thing I remember is waking up on top of the train car. I felt like I had just come off of anesthesia. My first instinct was to get off the train, so I grabbed a hold of a rod that was the size of my pinky that was sitting next to me to stabilize myself, and immediately it engulfed me in flames.”
Jesse was electrocuted with 13,000 volts. He pulled himself off the wire and fell onto the concrete below, where someone with a fire extinguisher put out the flames.
“The last thing I remember hearing is 60 percent of his body is burned, and a slight chance of survival,” he says.
Jesse was in coma for two months and underwent 13 surgeries, including having his arm amputated below his elbow. When he realized his arm had been amputated, he says his heart stopped.
“I started crying. I didn’t want to live.”
Jesse shares what motivated him to persevere and transform his body so he could return to bodybuilding.
- If you would like to help Jesse with his medical expenses, visit his GoFundMe page.
