Last Wednesday, Vinny Pinello got his legs back.
The 27-year-old Flower Hill resident, whose motorized wheel chair was stolen last month by a pair of teenage thieves, tested out his refurbished ride at the United Cerebral Palsy Association of Nassau in Roosevelt.
“I feel more independent,” said Pinello, who needs the customized wheel chair to participate in an educational work program at the association’s offices. “I can get around from class to class.”
On June 8, two 14-year-old boys stole the $17,000 wheelchair, a fully customized 600 Power Base model, from the Pinello home on Ridge Drive, which was under construction at the time.
The boys, one of whom lives in East Hills and the other in Flower Hill, rode the chair around the neighborhood until its battery died and they abandoned it.
“They took his legs away,” said Pinello’s mother, Carmela.
The chair was later found by a neighbor and returned, but had been heavily damaged and was unusable.
The boys, whose names were withheld by police because they are minors, were arrested June 10 and charged with third-degree counts of burglary and grand larceny after detectives investigating the matter found they had been bragging about the chair on Facebook.
“It’s horrible, what they did, and these are kids that live in the neighborhood, right up the block,” Carmela said. “They know who my son is and see him get off the bus every day.”
For a little more than a month, Pienllo used a manual wheel chair he had long since outgrown, which Carmela said limited Vinny’s mobility and could have led to further health complications.
“If he tipped over, he could have become paralyzed,” Carmela said.
Carmela said two people had to help Vinny into and out of his chair, and he could not move on his own. In addition, Vinny incurred rashes on his arms and legs from his skin’s interaction with the metals used from chair.
“People had to push me around,” Vinny said. “It was horrible, a hate crime against people with disabilities.”
Vinny would have had to wait six months for a replacement chair to be customized to his personal specifications.
But a pair of specialists from Rehab Solutions Inc. of Roosevelt fixed Vinny’s damaged chair using parts donated by Pride Mobility, based in Pennsylvania.
The repairs were finished in six weeks, Carmela said, and Vinny is back to riding around on his own.
“Now, he’s got his wheel chair and he’s comfortable,” Carmela said.
