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Remember the story about the African child that former NBA great Dikembe Mutombo brought to the US for a surgery to remove a life-threatening tumor on his face? Unfortunately, the youngster went into cardiac arrest during the operation.

According to TMZ, sources familiar with the surgery say that at around 6 PM Sunday, more than 6 hours into the operation, the 8-year-old boy … his name is Matadi … went into cardiac arrest and was immediately taken to the Intensive Care Unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. We’re told he’s now in stable condition and is slowly recovering.

The report also stated that the emergency happened toward the end of the surgery, which began at 11:30 AM.

At this point it’s not known if the surgeons had completed the surgery, but based on the schedule they were literally operating under, it most likely happened as they were wrapping up.

Matadi and his family were staying at the Ronald McDonald house in Los Angeles leading up to Sunday’s procedure. Mutombo, who met the little boy during a visit to the Congo, greeted the boy and his family when they landed Wednesday in Los Angeles.

As you  can imagine, for all the obvious reasons, young Matadi’s tumor was life-threatening. What’s just as bad is that he was also shunned by his community. The story goes that the boy’s parents were forced to pull him from school and keep him confined to his room because of unrelenting hate he was getting.

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