SAN ANTONIO – The brother of a call girl tearfully told a jury Thursday how she fought to live for six months after she was shot on Christmas Eve 2009.
"I learned that my sister had been shot and that she would never walk again," Kelvin Frago, in halting sobs, said as he told the jury how he rushed to the hospital where his 23-year-old sister, Lenora Frago, was being treated.
Frago said he was appointed as his sister's caregiver after she was sent home following a six-week hospital stay.
"She needed help getting out of bed," Frago testified. "She couldn't walk and she needed to be turned every couple of hours."
Frago said his sister took a turn for the worse in June 2010 after her breathing tube had become dislodged.
"I ran to the back and saw her - she was laying like lifeless," he said.
Lenora Frago was rushed to the hospital, where doctors told her brother she had serious brain damage due to oxygen deprivation.
"They told me if I would take her off her machines and I told them to take everything off," Frago sobbed. "And then she passed on."
According to prosecutors, Lenora Frago was shot in the neck and left paralyzed following a pre-dawn visit to the apartment of 30-year-old Ezekiel Gilbert, who is standing trial on murder charges.
Prosecutors said during opening arguments that the two argued over money he had paid her for sex. Gilbert opened fire into a car occupied by Frago and her pimp as they drove away from his apartment, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors rested their case Thursday afternoon. The trial will resume June 4 with defense testimony.
If Gilbert is found guilty, he faces a maximum punishment of life in prison.