Paraguayan international Gonzalez undergoes arm amputation after crash

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2006

ASUNCION (AFP) — Paraguayan international striker Julio Gonzalez, who plays for Italian second division club Vicenza, has had his left arm amputated after being seriously injured in a car crash in Italy.

"There was no alternative, he had to have an amputation to save his life," his father Celso Gonzalez told the ABC newspaper here from his son's bedside in a hospital in the northern Italian city of Padua.

The two-hour amputation on Tuesday was on Gonzalez's left arm, injured in a December 22 car crash that left the 24-year-old with multpile fractures and bruising.

Gonzalez, who won an Olympic silver medal with his national team at the 2004 Athens Games, underwent an initial 12-hour round of emergency surgery but there were complications.

The Paraguay...