Wounded vet to soon recieve home in Winter Park

Sgt. First Class Bacary Sambou will soon be coming home.

A year-long effort to give the wounded U.S. Army veteran a new house in Winter Park has reached the home stretch, with construction completed and the site nearly ready for the home’s installation.

The house currently sits in Plant City at Palm Harbor Homes, an organization who teamed up with the Hannibal Square Community Land Trust last year to give Sgt. Bacary Sambou a new house after he was wounded in Afghanistan. The house will be transported to the site by next week and completed by the end of the month.

“We’ve actually visited his house; it’s been constructed already,” Hannibal Square Community Land Trust Executive Director Denise Weathers said.

“It’s good to go.”

The generous endeavor had been put on hold back in February. A miscommunication between Palm Harbor Homes and the Hannibal Square Community Land Trust over who would pay for building materials and the final purchase of the home led to a shortage in materials.

Palm Harbor Homes agreed to donate the construction labor and some supplies, but Weathers told the Observer in February they were still looking for a donation of $50,000, foundation blocks and general contracting work to help start and finish the home.

Wells Fargo and Fair Housing Continuum have since stepped up to donate the required funding, though Weathers said they are still in need of furniture and appliances, including a washer and dryer, dishes and bedding.

“Bacary had been in the military for 18 years,” Weathers said. “When he got hurt, they sent him directly to the hospital, so he doesn’t have anything.”

“We’re trying to outfit his house with every imaginable amenity that he’s going to need.”

Sambou’s journey to a new home began with tragedy in the Middle East. The soldier has been bound to an electric wheelchair since March 17, 2012, when an improvised explosive detonated near his MRAP vehicle during a supply mission in Afghanistan. He suffered a spinal cord injury, a broken leg, two broken ribs, a broken hand and a vertical cut across the right side of his face that split his eye.

He still deals with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, and now receives treatment at the NeuroRestorative Center in Avalon Park.

The Hannibal Square Community Land Trust and Palm Harbor Homes found Sambou through an official from Fairways for Warriors, realizing he would make the perfect candidate for a new house. The city of Winter Park played a role of its own by donating the empty parcel of land at 663 Symonds Ave. – the site of Sambou’s new house.

The generosity feels incredible, said Sambou, who recently saw his new house in Plant City for the first time.

“I was so, so surprised to see how nice it is,” Sambou said.

“It’s the nicest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Denise explained that the project needs to wrap up soon, as Sambou may be discharged from the Army in the coming months and be forced to transfer out of the NeuroRestorative Center.

He’d be left with nowhere else to go, Weathers said.

“He’s still under a certain timeline to be out of the facility,” Weathers said. “I just want to make sure we’re not holding that up if he has to be out.”

Weathers said an open house and welcoming celebration will tentatively take place around the Fourth of July.