Gabrilla
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Gabrilla still trembles when he tells what happened. When he was 19 years old, Revolutionary United Front rebels invaded Sierra Leone from neighboring Liberia to seize its diamond mines. The rebels raided Gabrilla’s village and forced him to carry the loot into the bush. A rebel leader called "Killer" forced him to choose between two slips of paper, labeled "short sleeves" and "long sleeves". Gabrilla chose the "long sleeves" slip. "You’re lucky," said Killer. Gabrilla’s right leg was placed on a low tree branch and Killer used his machete to hack off his foot, instead of his entire leg. But Gabrilla’s "luck" ran out three days later, when he had his infected leg amputated above the knee. In 2008, the LIMBS team outfitted Gabrilla with a new prosthetic limb containing the LIMBS Knee, dramatically changing his life for the better.
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