Colchester A local man who survived Eastern equine encephalitis and then COVID-19 has returned home after more than a year in rehabilitation centers, where he alleges he was neglected, abused and forced to attempt suicide.
In August 2019, Richard Pawulski was a healthy 42-year-old man and a successful physical therapist who had just moved into his dream home in Colchester with his wife, Malgorzata, and their teenage daughter, Amellia. He was doing yard work on a summer day when he was unknowingly bitten by a mosquito carrying the deadly Eastern equine encephalitis virus, commonly known as EEE.
Pawulski started feeling flu-like symptoms on Aug. 22 and was soon taken to a hospital, where he slipped into a coma that lasted two months.