In some incredibly positive news, Possessed vocalist Jeff Becerra has walked for the first time in over 30 years, thanks to a set of robotic legs.
Becerra who has been paralyzed from the chest down since being shot in 1989, has uploaded a video of himself walking down the hallway of a medical facility to Possessed's Instagram. The momentous occasion was made possible by a pair of robotic legs made for him by ReWalk Robotics.
A death metal pioneer, Becerra's post has gone viral since posting, with the incredible feat capturing the attention of the metal community at large, and drawing a message of encouragement from fellow metal legend Gary Holt (Exodus, Slayer) who gave the fitting response of several devil horn emojis.
You can watch the video below
The uplifting footage comes two years after Becerra gave insight into the incident that led to his paralysis in an interview with The Underground Metal Gamer.
"I've been in a wheelchair longer than I've been walking," Becerra said. "It's my normal. It wasn't so much of an accident — I got shot by two different guns in a robbery. I was doing concrete construction. I worked something like 13 hours that day. I stopped to get a pack of Camels [cigarettes] and I guess I flashed a hundred [dollar bill] and on the way out, two guys in hoods, little ninja guys came running up with guns: 'Give me all of your fucking money.'
"I kind of resisted; I should have just given them the money, but I was fucked, I was cornered," he continued. "It's not the first time I had a gun pointed at me and I knew they meant business. We scuffled, there was no way out of it and I ended up getting shot a couple of times. The first guy pushed a 9-millimetre to my chest [points to bullet hole]. It broke through the ribs and shattered the lungs and stuck on in the spine, so I still have a 9-millimetre slug stuck on the vertebrate T3. I think the second guy was covering me from about 15 feet away, so there was nowhere to run. It was more like a knee-jerk reaction because the first shot was 'pow!' and right after, 'pow!'"
Becerra has slowly put his life back together since the shooting, getting a college degree, getting married, having children and reuniting Possessed and now he has achieved the previously impossible, by walking again. That's quite the winning streak!
Possessed has been touring regularly since 2007, with Becerra performing from a wheelchair. In 2019, the band released Revelations of Oblivion, their first album since 1986's Beyond The Gates.
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