‘I didn’t want to quit’

Emil Mendez

Just a few months after he arrived in Guyana for a year-long training stint, Belizean Emil Mendez was shot in an armed robbery and was left paralysed from the waist down.

Although many in similar circumstances would not think twice about leaving, Mendez, 21, did.

“I was a soldier and what I learned in my military was to never give up