YouTube sensation and bestselling author Josh Sundquist, 31, who lost his left leg to a tumour at the age of nine, posted a teary video on Monday relating his humiliation.
“I stepped on the platform, did some spins with my friend. People in the club were like ‘Yeah!’ They were excited about an amputee out and about, although I look a little different, I still have a great time at a club.
“While we were at the platform, after we were there for a minute or two, two security guards came up and pulled my crutches away.
“I was standing in the middle of the tense crowd without my crutches. You know as a person with one leg, it means I’m immobile you know, I can’t move, I can’t walk.” he said, bursting into tears in a YouTube video titled: “Security gang stole my crutches” uploaded on Monday.
Last Saturday, Sundquist was down in Malaysia to deliver a motivational talk at the 1Malaysia For Youth (iM4U) Reach Out programme in Puchong.
His six-minute video on YouTube was described by some of his fans as ‘rare’, as the mostly upbeat motivational speaker shed tears for the first time.
“You know its funny giving a motivation speech today where ostensibly the point of the speech is ‘Oh hey, I have one leg and I have got used to it and I have accepted it’, but some 12 hours later, in the club and it turns out, the pain still runs really deep,” he said in between heavy sobbing.
Sundquist still does not know why his crutches were taken from him and wondered if the club had a rule of only allowing girls to dance on the two-feet high platform.
He says: “… or even worse, you know, people with disabilities, we don’t let them… we don’t let people see people with disabilities at our club. Only beautiful people can be on our platform. God forbid someone who is different is in the centre of our club.”
Sundquist did not say how he got off the stage, but left minutes later after snatching back his crutches from the bouncers.
“They did not offer any explanation. As soon as I got off the platform, I got my crutches away and we left.
“Everyone I met in Malaysia, in exception of a certain club, it was such an honour to meet you at my talks,” he said.
Sundquist said despite being a motivational speaker and reaching out to others to keep their chins up, he too was only human and had moments when he got emotionally crushed himself.
“I always get, “Oh Josh you have such an amazing attitude, you know, nothing can get you down.”
“I want to make it clear, things can make me down sometime.
“But what do you do? You get up, somehow or rather you get up and I love my life, I love my wife, I write my books, I make my videos and write speeches and I try to be the human being my parents taught me to be,” he said before signing off.
Sundquist, who was part of the United States Paralympic Ski Team in 2006, met his wife Ashley Nolan in a dance club in Washington.
According to the New York Times, Nolan approached Sundquist at a club in 2011, after she was impressed with his dancing, despite being an amputee.
Sundquist then tracked her down on Facebook and the two got married last September.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqGUXvsMuiI&feature=youtu.be