2ndShotBlog.com

Just three weeks ago the kid who lived next door was shot and killed. Not in the neighborhood. He was at a nightclub in the next town over. At 1 a.m. there was a fight in the parking lot. One of the guys in the fight went to his car, got a gun, and fired several shots at the man he was fighting. A stray bullet hit the 20 year old kid from next door. He was taken by helicopter to the same hospital trauma center that I was flown to.

He didn’t make it. He died at 4 a.m.

By all accounts, he wasn’t involved in the fight. Just an innocent bystander. I feel terrible. I’ve been composing this blog post in my head ever since. Something else happened this past weekend that made me decide to finally write it. I’ll get to that in a minute.

The kid was a mild irritant. He had an old Buick that he worked on incessantly. Painted metallic blue and silver, with lots of chrome, those hydraulics that would lift it up high off the wheels, and mufflers that made the engine LOUD. He thought he was cool driving that thing around. He looked ridiculous.

I feel terrible in part because I was just as ridiculous and probably far more irritating when I was his age. I had a black Camaro Z28 with a special after market stereo (remember 8 Track?), that I played LOUD. With my black aviator shades (that I wore even at night), I thought I was cool.

But I’ve lived my life. And I’m still alive. He’ll never meet a special girl, fall in love, have that girl gently wean him away from his childish endeavors, have a family and a career, and experience all the ups and downs that come with those.

The family next door immigrated here from Mexico. They’re hard working people. Even now, in the depth of this recession, they all have jobs. They’re up and out early in the morning. When they’re home they’re working on the house and the yard. I looked up their real estate record. They bought the house 12 years ago. They immigrated here and they worked hard and became legal residents. They had their little piece of the American dream. Now they also have a piece of the American nightmare.

This past weekend there was another shooting in downtown Sarasota. Three blocks from where I live. Right on Main St. at 9 p.m. on Saturday night, a half block away from a busy movie theater. There’s a small well-lit park where teenagers hang out. This 18 year old boy was parading around with a large Confederate flag. A black kid accused him of being a racist. An argument ensued. The black kid shot the kid with the flag. The wounded kid was flown to that same trauma center and he’s currently in critical but stable condition.

How ignorant to be parading around with a Confederate flag. Turns out the kid isn’t even a Southerner. He’s only been living here for a few years and is from Pennsylvania. But ignorance doesn’t deserve death. When you shoot somebody at close range, you’re trying to kill him.

When I read the above story in the newspaper, I decided to look up how much violent crime there is in Sarasota. Turns out, there’s a LOT. Take a look at this:

http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/fl/sarasota/crime/

I Googled ‘Sarasota Violent Crime’ and came up with a half dozen of these kinds of sites that rate the crime in different cities and towns. They all agree that Sarasota has one of the highest crime rates of anywhere in the US. More than almost anywhere in the first world.

I come back to “Why?” Can anybody tell me? What is it about Sarasota that causes it to have such a high rate of murders, rapes and violent assaults per capita? You can reply via commenting. Just click on the ‘Comment’ text that appears at the top of this post.

I was talking to the local Assistant State’s Attorney the other day. We were discussing my assailant’s bail and how or if he’d be let out of jail prior to the trial. After assuring me that I would be notified if my shooter were released from prison, the ASA mentioned that it might be a year before this even goes to trial.

What?

I didn’t think of it until well after I had hung up, but the phrase ‘Right to a Speedy Trial’ popped into my head. So I decided to do a little research. I found the following on the Attorney General of Florida’s ‘A Guide for Victims’ web page:

How long will the process take?

The defendant has the right to a speedy trial, within 180 days (six months) of the time he/she is arrested and/or charged by information or indictment. During this time the defendant must be arraigned, discovery must be conducted (the process whereby the defendant, through his or her attorney examines evidence and witnesses the State will present at trial), pretrial motions must be heard, plea negotiations will be held, and a trial or plea and sentencing will take place. However, the defendant can waive speedy trial if he or she needs more time to prepare the case. Therefore, some cases may take more than 180 days to resolve.

According to the Constitution, victims also have a right to a speedy trial, but only to the extent that this right does not interfere with the constitutional rights of the accused. A time period for the victims right to a speedy trial has not been defined by the law.

During the time the case is pending, the Office of Statewide Prosecution will keep you informed of all court dates as well as any delays in reaching the resolution of the case. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the prosecutor assigned to your case.

So, if I’m understanding this correctly, the trial should begin in six months. Not a year.

I’ll have to call the SAS. He’s been very accommodating. He, obviously, knows much more about this process than I do.

If anybody out there has any experience with a Victim’s Right to a Speedy Trial, please comment. I’d like to learn more. I don’t want to wait around for a year for the trial to start. I want to get this behind me. I’d think the assailant would too.

I’ve been having a recurring dream.

In the dream, it’s the middle of the night. I’m alone and asleep. Not in my house, though. I’m in a high-rise apartment building. I don’t question this change of residence. I just accept that this is where I live now.

The doorbell rings and wakes me. I’m apprehensive. Who would be at my door at this hour?

I get out of bed, and without turning on a light, I walk out of the bedroom and across the living room toward the front door.

There’s no furniture in the living room. A little bit of blue-ish fluorescent light shines through the windows from the street lamps outside. I can tell that the walls and the ceiling are painted white, and there’s white tile on the floor.

As I approach the front door, which is also white, I can see a bit of yellow incandescent light spilling through the peephole and under the bottom of the door.

I see that the chain lock is unhooked. The steel chain is dangling loose. I quickly grab the chain and slide the end through the chain plate, thinking, “I can’t believe I left that off. I always double-check.”

Then I look through the peephole. Nobody’s there. And I look at the floor. No shadow from someone standing in the hall.

I start to breathe a sigh of relief when I notice that the deadbolt is open. Something is really wrong. I wouldn’t go to bed and leave that unlocked. I turn it and the lock slides into place.

I try the door knob. It turns. That’s unlocked too. I lock it.

I realize that the door was completely unlocked. Anyone could have opened it and let themselves in.

I think, “Did they have enough time to ring the bell and slide inside before I walked into the living room?” The panic I’m feeling wakes me up for real. I sit up in my bed in my little house, my eyes open and my heart pounding.

I know the origin of the dream. My buddy Step came over when I got home from the hospital. He’s a carpenter. He installed peepholes and chain locks on the front and back doors of the house. I make sure that the dead bolts, the knob locks, and the chain locks are all secured at all times. My girlfriend has a key, but she has to wait for me to hobble over and undo the chain lock before she can enter the house.

If you had asked me a month ago, I would have told you that I felt younger than my 54 years. Both in my mind and in my body. I don’t know if I looked younger, but I felt younger. I didn’t think about it, but I was confident. I felt able to take care of myself, able to defend myself.

Today I feel older than my actual age. I’m aware that I’m a gimp. If I was an animal, I wouldn’t last a night in the wild. The injured and the lame are easy prey.

I’m realizing that the kid did more than cause me physical harm and disrupt my business. He changed the way I look at the world. He changed the way I look at myself.

There are many issues that come into play around the shooting. This blog is meant to cover all of them. Right now, nothing much is happening re the judicial facet, or I’d address that. I think the first hearing is on April 3rd. So I’m going to give a little air time to my medical condition now.

I know nobody else is as interested in this topic as I am (maybe my mother), so I won’t dwell on it. This should be a non-issue shortly anyway.

I was given a blood transfusion when I was operated on following the shooting. I had lost so much blood, there really was no other choice… no other way to keep me alive. We’re all aware of the dangers of blood transfusions. They can result in hepatitis, AIDS or a number of other blood borne diseases. Chances are that the blood I received wasn’t tainted, and that I have nothing to worry about.

The ‘bad blood’ that I refer to in this post title isn’t about the transfusion, but rather my current complaint which is lack of energy, tiredness, dizziness and nausea. I’ve been told that this is a natural phase of the healing process. I have ‘hematomas’, which are like the scabs you get on a surface wound, but these are inside the body.

The bullet entered me in front, just below my belly button. It never exited, but it drilled through my ample mid-section and stopped when it hit the inside surface of the skin, in what is known in medical parlance as my left ‘love handle’. You can see where it hit because there’s a welt there.

Anyway, now that all the wounds and incisions inside me have mostly healed, those hematomas are breaking down. As they do, they release a lot of crap (another medical term) into my system. That’s what’s making me so tired. They’ll be gone soon and I should have just some physical therapy between me and a full recovery.

OK. Hopefully that’s the last of the medical updates. I will have more re the healthcare system, and I imagine those will be of wider interest.

I’ve never been pro gun. I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it or researching it. It’s just one of those issues where I’ve never been conflicted. I think it’s stupid to allow people to have guns. As you can imagine, this episode has done nothing to change my views. So, when I decided that Gun Control should be another topic addressed in this blog, I felt I should do some research…

I’ve spent a couple of hours looking at blogs and online articles etc. from the NRA and other pro-gun constituencies. I admit my research hasn’t been exhaustive, but I think I’ve seen enough. There’s no logical argument for carrying a hand gun.

The first question the police asked me, when I gave my statement, was if I was carrying a weapon that night. My answer was, “No. I never carry a weapon.” I found out later that they also asked my girlfriend if I had been carrying, and they searched my house to see if I had any weapons. If I had a weapon on me (a gun, or a knife… presumably even a baseball bat) that night, they could not have charged my attacker with Attempted Murder. If I had been carrying a gun, I would have used it. The kid missed me with his first shot. I could have shot and killed him. If that happened, I’d be the one cooling my heels in the county lock-up awaiting trial.

None of the other first world countries allow ownership of handguns. You never read about a high ranking politician in any of those countries accidentally shooting their friend in the face. It just doesn’t happen.

I believe that if we had gun laws in this country comparable to those in western Europe (or China, India, Japan, etc.), I would not have been shot three weeks ago. That sixteen year old kid would not have been able to get his hands on a gun.

The NRA likes to say, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” I disagree.

Guns enable people to quickly and easily kill people. Without the gun that kid would have had to get much closer to me to inflict bodily harm. It would have required more courage and more participation of his mind, body and soul. If you remove the gun from the equation, you can still have a murderous individual; but that person is going to need more time and energy to commit that murder. Shooting someone with a gun is like murdering by remote control. It’s like playing a video game.

It’s difficult to accidentally kill someone with your bare hands. Not so with a hand gun.

I just reread my last blog post. I need to correct an omission.

The last post was a bit whiny and it missed an important point - I’m alive! The EMTs and the trauma surgeons saved my life. I am extremely grateful.

I was rolled into the ICU around 4 a.m. on that Thursday three weeks ago. When I arrived in the ICU, I could breathe only with the help of a ventilator. I could hear conversations occurring around me, but I couldn’t communicate. I couldn’t even blink my eyes.

By 10 a.m. my eyes were open, I was breathing on my own, and I could speak in a whisper. The Sarasota police detective in charge of my case called the hospital to ask when he could drop by to take my statement.

By 2 p.m. I was sitting up, sipping water through a straw, and talking to two Sarasota police detectives. They asked me to recount what happened the night before. They recorded my statement and took notes.

I told them the story exactly the way I described it in the first post of this blog, the one labeled ‘Why?’

When I finished, they told me my statement matched what they had pieced together from statements given by my girlfriend (who witnessed only what transpired at the back door of my house), the two boys who were with the shooter, and two eye witnesses (who saw only what happened in the alley behind my house).

BTW - I never saw these eye witnesses, but I’m grateful to them. The detectives told me one was a kid on a bike. When he saw me drop like a sack of potatoes, he thought I had been killed. He rode home and told his parents. They immediately took him to the police station so he could report what he saw. The other eye witness not only corroborated my story when he gave his statement, he dialed 911 when he saw me drop. That’s why the EMTs arrived so quickly and another reason why I’m alive to write this blog. I assume I’ll get a chance to meet and thank both of these individuals during the trial.

Satisfied that I had no connection to the shooter, that I am the victim of a violent crime, the lead detective gave me paperwork to fill out so that the state can reimburse me for expenses not covered by my insurance. That is very helpful.  If I had to pay for my deductibles plus received no compensation for business lost (I’ve been unable to work for the past three weeks), I’d have been approximately $30k out of pocket.

Over the past three weeks these detectives have also been helpful in other ways. I’ll tell you about those in posts to come.

“It was a drug deal gone bad.”

I assumed I was in Sarasota Memorial Hospital. I was listening to two nurses talking about me.

When you lose more than 50% of the blood in your body, everything shuts down. To keep me alive, they had a ventilator forcing air into my lungs. My heart must have been beating. I don’t know whether it was assisted or not. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t. At that point, the only thing I could do was listen.

I felt my bowels let loose underneath me.

“Oh, gross! He shit himself.”

I could understand their disgust. I’m a big boy, and they would have to clean me up. But I had been shot in the belly. Wouldn’t there be an expectation? Wouldn’t a bowel movement be a sign of something – either positive or negative?

I still don’t know how those hospital employees came to the conclusion that I was shot during a drug deal. That’s not what happened. The police report details what did occur.

When I answered the door that night, I was wearing pants and a shirt, socks and sneakers. I had no ID on me. It’s my habit to empty my pockets when I come home, and put the contents in the same spot on the kitchen counter.

I suppose it’s human nature to assume the worst. Especially when you work the night shift in an Emergency Room.

I found out later that I had been air lifted by helicopter to the Saint Petersburg Bayfront Trauma Center. I don’t know if Sarasota Memorial refused me because I didn’t have a health insurance card, or if the decision was made to move me because Bayfront had trauma surgeons at the ready.

After spending two hours with the Sarasota police at the station house, my girlfriend drove up to Bayfront with my insurance card. When she arrived around 1 a.m., she gave the card to the emergency room receptionist. I was in surgery. The people working on me had no reason to believe I had insurance to cover the cost of the surgery. All they saw was a naked man (the EMTs had cut away my clothes) covered in blood.

My femoral artery had been severed. That’s a 10 to 15 minute bleed out. The Sarasota police were on the scene immediately. An unseen eye witness watched the whole incident and dialed 911 as soon as I dropped to the ground.

At 8:45 p.m. on a Wednesday night in February 2009, my girlfriend and I were watching TV in my living room. A knock came at the back door. Unusual. People always enter the house at the front.

I opened the door and there were three young men standing on the porch. They were clean cut - button down shirts and khaki pants, with short hair cuts. The one in the middle said, “We need to use your phone. Can we come in?”

I said, “No. Do I look like an idiot?”

Without saying a word, they turned around and walked into my backyard.

That’s when I made my mistake.

A year earlier someone had thrown a rock through the windshield of my car which I park out back. I wanted to make sure they didn’t vandalize the car or the exterior of the house, so I followed them.

They walked past my car and took a right into the service alley. I was about 20 feet behind them.

I was yelling (all bluff and bravado), “Go on! Get out! I want you out of the area! Keep moving!”

I turned the corner into the alley. The one in the middle, the same one who spoke to me at my back door, turned around with a gun in his hand. He pointed it at me and fired. It missed… a bit off to my right. He calmly re-aimed and, with a Mona Lisa smile on his face, pulled the trigger a second time. This time the bullet hit me as I was beginning to turn away from him. It entered my gut just below and to the right of my belly button.

People (all men) have asked me what it feels like to get shot.  I registered a pressure at the point of entry. Then a quick burning sensation. And I dropped to the ground. As I was falling, I watched the three young men run away.