bobby

Sixteen-year-old at Time of Shooting
Shot: July 15 1997
Minneapolis Minnesota

When they didn't hit him they started shooting at my family and me

Bobby: "I was working at a summer job program painting houses and I had just gotten home. I took a shower and decided to lift some weights. My mom asked us to pick-up my elder sister LaVonne, and my ten-month-old niece, Sanayah, at my aunt's house. My sister Raichel was driving. She had parked our van so that it was facing the opposite direction from the other cars, so our passenger side door was facing the middle of the street. I went up to my aunt's house to tell LaVonne to come out.

"As we were leaving my cousin pulled up and said hi as he walked towards his house. Then, all of a sudden a car pulled around the corner and the people in the car started shooting at him. When they didn't hit him they started shooting at my family and me. I was standing in the street just about to open the passenger side door. My sister LaVonne had put my niece in the van and was getting in, but the door wasn't closed, and they shot her in the legs. I tried to run around to the other side of the van, but they shot me from behind, in my upper back, as they drove past. I couldn't have been but five feet away from them. I fell straight backward.

You see your kids and they're fine and a couple of minutes later your whole life can change

"As I lay there I was worried about my sister. My niece Sanayah was crying hysterically and I was yelling, 'Is she okay?' At the very same time fluid was filling my lungs and it was harder for me to breathe and I couldn't talk as loud. The bullet, a twenty-two, went from the right side of my back and hit my spine, the bone fragments went into my spinal cord; the bullet pierced my lungs and lodged in my chest by my arteries. I was very shocked; you never think this could happen to you. It was very, very painful, I thought I was about to die and I could feel my life slowly draining away. My elder sister LaVonne had blood gushing out of her legs. My sister Raichel was running around screaming, crying, she thought she was going to lose both her brother and sister. My mom was called; we had just left the house about ten minutes before. You see your kids and they're fine and a couple of minutes later your whole life can change. How devastating can that be?

At the time I thought she was an angel

"One of the neighbors came out and started praying for me, she held my hand, I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I knew she was praying. She was a lighter skinned woman, she had all white on, and at the time I thought she was an angel. I think her being there really set the tone of my life from then on, and my belief in God and how things were going to go for me, that life is going to be hard sometimes, but there's still the power of prayer. This neighbor put her life in danger; she didn't know if they were going to come back and start shooting again. It was very courageous of her. I still don't know who she is. At that point--after I found out that Sanaya was okay, that she wasn't hit, and I knew that my sister LaVonne was going to be okay, I could see she was just shot in her legs, I just felt this total calmness and peace come over me and I was okay with the idea of death."