St. Joseph’s Helpers offer prayer and support, along with new ramp, to Detroit woman paralyzed after shooting
DETROIT ─ It was just a typical car ride with friends on July 13, 2024, when Manal Alyasseri’s life changed forever.
She was riding in the passenger seat while a friend was driving. Another friend sat behind Alyasseri with his girlfriend.
The girlfriend handed Alyasseri’s friend a gun, and somehow, the gun went off, with a bullet striking Alyasseri’s vertebra.
“I was in the front seat, he was in the back seat, his girlfriend handed him a gun, and he shot me,” Alyasseri, now 18, told Detroit Catholic. “I don’t know if or what exactly happened, but I’m thinking it was an accident.”
Alyasseri was rushed to the hospital, where she spent a month in and out of surgery before spending another month in a rehabilitation center.
Alyasseri was paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. She relied on her brother and mother to carry her up the front steps of their home on Detroit’s westside; her world was now limited to a small, two-story home, with her bedroom now on the first floor.
That’s when Alyasseri’s mother, Michelle, reached out on Facebook to St. Joseph’s Helpers, a Catholic-Christian organization of volunteers based out on the second floor of the rectory of St. Mary Parish in Rockwood, to see if there was anything the volunteer handymen could do.
“We had a call into our office back in 2024 from the mother of a 17-year-old girl who was shot and paralyzed and needed a ramp for her home so she could get in and out,” Rayna Bennett, executive director of St. Joseph’s Helpers, said.
St. Joseph’s Helpers had installed portable ramps before, but this is the first permanent ramp the group would install. St. Joseph’s Helpers reached out to a Wisconsin company called Discount Ramps, and through funding from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Service’s Children With Special Needs Funds, along with $2,000 from St. Joseph Helpers’ own funds, the group was able to secure a structure to meet Alyasseri’s needs.
“We do ramps that normally are in the range of $800 to $1,000, but this was close to $7,000,” St. Joseph Helper volunteer Tony Rosati said. “We had to find additional funding, which we found through the state. Then, we had to apply for a building license through the City of Detroit. It all took time, but now we have a ramp ready.”
While the small team of men were outside building the ramp, Bennett remained inside with Alyasseri and her mother, conversing with one another, offering them prayers and support, and getting to understand Alyasseri’s story and what this ramp means to her.
“When we first started St. Joseph’s Helpers, I couldn’t imagine us doing these big ramps because we’re regulated by the state to do small repairs,” Bennett said. “But because we were funded by this program, we were able to gather our volunteers together to make this happen for Manal.”
Since the incident, Alyasseri's world has become small, as movement in and out of the house has been difficult.
The ramp in front of her home opens up the world to her.
“When I found out they were here to build the ramp, I was really happy because I really need a ramp to get out of my house,” Alyasseri said. “I’m happy to be able to leave my house by myself again, to leave and go places.”
Rosati said Alyasseri’s bravery, perseverance and patience were what motivated his team to get this project completed; a couple of days’ worth of labor for a group of a few men, opening up a lifetime of possibilities for a young woman.
“This story is about her, her patience, her perseverance for going through all this,” Rosati said. “She still has got an amazing fight ahead of her. This is just one piece of it. But when you meet her, you know she’s up for the fight. This story is about her and the resilience of an 18-year-old girl. We’re just the guys helping along the way.”
