Photojournalist Pablo Grillo, who suffered major head injuries after a military police officer shot him with a tear gas canister during a protest in March, is “not recovering as expected” and would undergo a new surgery on Tuesday, the family announced. His father said the intervention was successful, and doctors will analyze his progress in upcoming days.

“Neurologically, he is in a plateau,” the family added via a statement published on the X account JusticiaPorPabloGrillo (Justice for Pablo Grillo) before the operation.

The procedure, the eighth Grillo has endured since the incident, was an attempt to increase his cerebrospinal fluid, a substance that surrounds the brain and spine, protecting it from injuries.

The surgery comes on the heels of an August 13 surgery in which Grillo was implanted with skull prosthetics. Although the operation went well, doctors detected that his condition was not improving in neurological terms due to a lack of fluid in his brain.

On Wednesday morning, Fabián Grillo, the photojournalist’s father, said the new operation to fix the fluid issue was successful. Pablo will now undergo a tomography, and doctors will analyze his progress in upcoming days. 

“Doctors are optimistic,” he said.

According to Fabián, his son was “not very receptive” and seemed “lethargic” before this new intervention. “He could answer questions, but more with gestures rather than words. Doctors had predicted that.”

He added that he will receive news on Pablo’s progress throughout the day. “Pablo continues to fight; he is strong. He can feel the love you show him, and he needs it,” the family wrote in their post on Tuesday.

Pablo Grillo’s injury

Pablo Grillo has been hospitalized since he was shot in the head on March 12, when he was working covering a pensioners’ protest outside of Congress. He initially suffered multiple skull fractures and loss of brain mass but survived. He spent almost three months in intensive care and was discharged to undergo rehab in another hospital in early June.

Evidence collected by human rights organizations proved Corporal Héctor Guerrero had been the one who shot Grillo and that the injury happened because the officer did not follow protocol for the weapon, angling the gun to the front instead of upward.

Although the military police closed its internal investigation into the officer, saying the severe injury happened due to “random circumstances,” Guerrero is now scheduled to be questioned by the judiciary next Tuesday. Human rights organizations and the family had been demanding the judiciary take this step for months.