[music playing] I honestly felt as though
Satan was in my house that night. And this wave of unbelievable
pain washed over my body. My heart was pumping, and I
was putting out a lot of blood. I didn't think I was
going to make it at all. And I said, oh, dear God,
this can't get any worse. He seemed like a nice guy. He was kind of cute. He had kind of a curly
hair on the top of his head and wore these nice shaped
glasses for his face, and he had these
really cute dimples. During that time, he had
made some advances toward me and asked me out. And I wasn't interested
in dating him. I told him that,
you know, I wouldn't be interested in being anything
more than friends with him. So once his treatment was
finished at the doctor's office, and he was all better
and didn't have any more pain, he stopped coming
in as a patient. And I thought to myself,
well, that's a little unusual. I don't usually like people
just dropping by like that. And I-- I asked, who is it? And he said, it's Alan. And I said, Alan? I said to myself, I
don't know any Alan. It had been so long
since, I didn't-- I certainly didn't expect
him to stop by like that So I walked over
to the door, and I looked through the peephole,
and I recognized him. And I had never felt
any reason to fear him. He always seemed
like a nice guy. He was helpful, considerate,
always willing to lend a hand. He said, oh, well, I was in
the area, thought I'd stop by and say hi. I said, oh, well,
that's a nice surprise. Oh, come in a mom-- come in,
I'm unloading my groceries. He came in, and we
talked for a few minutes. We were catching up,
and he was telling me he'd been out of town
for a couple years, and he'd just moved
back not too long ago, because his mom had been ill. And I viewed the
slideshow on his laptop of these beautiful pictures,
and I complimented him on every one. When the slideshow started
to repeat, all of a sudden, he stood up, and he said,
oh, excuse me a moment. I have to get something. Now, of course, my attention
is focused on the screen, because I'm still looking at
these pictures, distracted looking at these pictures. And when he stood up and walked
around to the bag, his computer bag behind me, right behind
my sofa, he pulled out a gun. And the sound was deafening. All of a sudden, I heard
[clicks] right behind my head. My wife was on
vacation, and I decided to go up, because
it was supposed to be a beautiful weekend. The temperatures
were just right, and it was a great time
to be building on my house and getting some projects done. I was hoping to surprise my
wife with some good projects finished up. And so I elected, at
the end of the day, to paint some windows on the
outside of the house, which are only accessible through
walking over a metal roof. When I went and got
my painting gear, I went around and
collected some ropes to make sure that I'd
be safe on the roof, because I knew I was by
myself and didn't think too much of it, because I'd gone
on the roof by myself before. And I'd actually installed
some bolts in the roof that I could tie ropes
off to, some eye bolts, and I'd tie myself on the roof,
so-- because I didn't want to fall off. And I thought, if I ever fell
off the roof to the south side of the house where the
hill is, nobody was going to be able to survive it. About a half hour
into the project, I was attacked by some hornets. And I beat them off, and then
decided, well, I'd had enough of working on the roof. And I took my safety
gear and my paint, went downstairs, and started
getting ready for a bath. I'd take my clothes
off, and I realized that it was awfully
quiet, and I was used to having my radio around. And it was-- I'd left
it playing on the roof. So I threw a towel
around me and just went up with a quick
scurry up to the roof. And I was about
to get the radio, and the hornets
attacked me again. I took my towel, and
I was waving my towel at the hornets trying to keep
them from stinging me anymore. And at this point, I-- I kicked the bucket, and
I had a bucket of water up there to clean
up any paint spills. Well, when the water hit my
feet, it dropped me to the roof that fast. And immediately, I started
sliding off the roof. I had a fleeting thought
of trying to save myself by reaching out, but my
Navy training kicked in, and I said to myself,
just go off the roof in a controlled fashion. If I go off uncontrolled, I'm
liable to hurt myself worse. And I remember
thinking just before I got to the edge of the roof,
you're really going off the roof now. That was a terrible,
terrible thought. She fit right
in with the guys. She rode a motorcycle and worked
out a lot, things like that. She was fearless and
in shape, attractive, and she was a good skydiver. The initiation usually is
getting pied in the face with whipped cream,
things like that. It's all in fun. And we were by ourselves
when all of our friends and the rest of the
skydivers come from nowhere, and they hit her with the pies,
and there was whipped cream everywhere, and everybody
had it all over them. And the way she reacted to
it was different than what we had ever seen or expected. She was fairly violent,
and she actually wrestled with one of the
men, who was a fireman, and pinned him to the ground. Right then, I started having my
doubts about our relationship. During the day, she was calling
me on my phone at work, which she never had done it before. As the day went on, I knew
that she wasn't at her friend's house. I clearly knew she was at a
bar, and there was bar music in the background, and she
was outright lying to me about where she was. This was the last straw,
because I knew at that point I didn't want to have a
relationship with somebody that was-- that could be that violent
that quickly over nothing, and then outright
lie the next day. So I, at that point,
had made a decision that I would go talk to her. She kept saying she was coming
home, which she never did, until about right
before midnight. She just didn't open the door,
and she kind of flung it open. She was very angry. I mean way more than I've had
experience with other people. I think I said a
few words to her, and it's like, I'm not
getting through to her at all. There's not even
any sense in trying. I believe she was saying,
you're not leaving me. You're never going to leave me. And I turned around,
and she was standing up military style with a pistol. [music playing] And then in the next instant,
he put this loaded, cocked gun right up to the back of my head. And then he grabbed my
hair in his other hand, and he said, Christine, "I
want you to listen to me very carefully. I want you to put
your head face down. You're not going
to feel anything. I'm not going to hurt you. Just do as I say." And I said to myself, I'm
not going to feel anything? This man is going to shoot
me in my head for what? For nothing? Because I didn't want
to go out with him? And the next thing I
pictured in my-- my mind was my blood splattering all
over my white sofa, floor, the walls. I pictured blood
splatter everywhere. I pictured my cat's paw
prints in the blood. And I said to
myself, I said, God, my life's not going
to end like this. And at that moment, I got
the courage within me. And I did not give in. I did not do what
he told me to do. I did not put my head
face down in the sofa, so he could just shoot me
in the back of the head. That's what I thought
his intention was. And I pulled away from
his grip, and I turned, and I looked at him right in
the eyes, and I never blinked. And I looked at him dead
right in his eyes, and I said, Alan, I'm your friend. What are you doing? God bless you. And he said, Christine, and
he trying to regain control of the situation, but at
this moment, at this point, I figured I had nothing to lose. If this man was going
to shoot me in the head, I had to do whatever it took
to get myself out my door and get away from this man. And as I was walking toward
him, he was backing up. He didn't know
what to do next, I guess because I had
tried to take over control of the situation. We got to my front door. I had to get the door open,
which means I was going to have to turn my back when I was going
to go for it and make the run. And I was so afraid to take my
eyes off of his, because I just didn't trust him. And I thought, I have this
moment, this split second. Make a decision. Go. Run for it. I turned the door knob,
and I pushed the door open, and I ran as fast as I could. I remember just before I got
to the end of the roof, saying, you're really
going off the roof. And it was a bad feeling,
because I knew I was alone, and I was going off
for a pretty good fall. The fall was in
excess of 20 feet, and I figured it was really
going to hurt when I got down at the bottom. And when I hit, I
hit awfully hard. I looked down and glanced
at my right wrist, and it was swollen already, so
I had this thought, all right, you have a broken wrist. And then I was able to pause
there for a second longer, and then this wave
of unbelievable pain washed over my body. When I was able to come
to my senses again, I realized that I was all alone. My nearest neighbor
was hundreds of feet away, well out of earshot,
if they were even home, and my wife was on
vacation in Hawaii. And I was somehow going to have
to figure out how I was going to get back up to my
cell phone, which I'd left inside the front
door of my house. I decided, at this point,
I better figure out what was wrong with me. And so I-- I was
able to stand up. My knees were shaking like-- like leaves. And I remember
leaning to my left, and as I leaned to my left,
I could feel my pelvis grinding on my left side. And I went back straight
again, and I leaned a tiny bit to my right, and
my pelvis started grinding on the right side. So I realized my pelvis
is broken in two places, and I'm probably not
going to be able to walk. I did try to take a step forward
with my right leg, and then my left, and my legs
refused to move. Perhaps my body was
smarter than the brain was, because at this point,
I realized it was almost a hopeless situation. Here, I was naked,
and I was going to have to drag my body
over all these stones and sticks in my
way, and it was-- I was already covered from
head to foot with scratches and tears from
falling down the hill. Now I was going to have to
drag myself up the hill. I was looking up
from the ground, up this hill, which-- which
is about an angle like this. So I painfully started making
my way forward an inch or so at a time, and that's
all I could get. And time seemed to
stretch on forever, and I did not make
that much progress. But I kept pressing
on with the thought, if I'm going to save
myself, it's got to be me. And nobody else is going
to be around to save me, and I don't want
to die out here. She was pointing
it at my chest, and she was about six feet away. There wasn't any way that
I could get to the gun, because she had her finger on
the trigger, and it was just-- I thought to myself, don't
shoot me in the chest, you know, because that's probably
an instant kill shot. At that point, I
wasn't quite sure what her intentions
were with it. I thought she might
be trying to scare me, and those doubts were
completely removed when I said, I need to go. She said, get on your
knees, you mother effer. And I told her, no, I think
I'll just get out of here, and I took a step forward. And she lowered the gun and
shot me through the leg. I immediately dropped
down and picked myself back up to my knees, and she
raised her leg up and kicked me with her heel, dropped
it down on my face, and I had some pretty
severe damage to my face at that point. I looked up at her. She was smiling, no
remorse whatsoever. She was getting
a kick out of it. At that point, she put
the barrel on my forehead. I was really OK with what
was going to happen to me. I-- I didn't beg for my life. I thought to myself,
you've been pretty good, and Grandpa, I'm going
to see you in a minute. And I'd actually thought
that my life was over then. When I looked up at her
and she was smiling, I kind of smirked back at her. I knew what was going to happen. I didn't want her to
think I was afraid. I told her, you're probably
going to go to prison the rest of your life. She said, you don't know me. I don't give a F, and
she pulled the trigger and blew the left
side of my skull off. [music playing] And as soon as I took off,
and I ran, and my eyes were no longer fixated on his,
and my back was turned, that man open fired on me. I was running so fast that
the first bullet hit me through the bottom of my
foot, through the skin in between the toes, and the
second bullet that he fired so quickly-- boom, boom-- the second bullet
went right through my spine, obliterated my spine,
shattering my spine, severing my spinal cord. And I'm laying there
in my driveway, right on this side of my
driveway in the gravel side. And I said to myself, my god,
what just happened to me? What the-- what just happened? My god, I have just been shot. I'm not going to die,
not like this, not now. And I was trying
to move my body. I was trying to move
to get out of the way. I was struggling with my
hands, and I couldn't move. I was paralyzed. It was dead weight. I felt like I had been
pinned to my driveway, and I was helpless. I couldn't get out of the way. I couldn't move. I couldn't run. I was at his mercy. The next thing I know, I saw
this huge tire coming straight for me. And I said, oh, dear God,
this can't get any worse. There was nothing
I could do except come to grips with the fact I
was going to be dragging myself up the hill. I couldn't raise any part of my
body to get it off the ground, so whatever I encounter,
whether it be rock or stick, it was going to be
dragging across there, and I was going to continue
to scratch my body up. Each time I moved,
it was lots of pain, so pain was the
order of the day. I just kept painfully
moving forward. I could go about an inch at a
time with tremendous effort. It was just exhausting to
go an inch or so at a time, and here I was looking
at 100 feet to go. And it was almost
overwhelming at the time. And I just had to press
forward with the thought of, well, once I get to the
steps, maybe it'll be easier. I couldn't make any use of my
right hand, so if it fell over, I had to pick up
this broken hand and put it back to
where I was going. So I was trying to crawl and-- and keep my hand arranged
so that I wouldn't hurt it anymore, because every
time it fell, it was-- I was adding to my pain again. And I thought, well,
I've got it made now. All I have to do is
crawl up the stairs. So I made my way on
my back to the stairs and tried going up on my back,
and the pain was so terrible, I just-- I about passed out. I guess I'd gone limp,
and I wound up in a ball at the bottom of the steps. When I came to from
sliding down the steps, I thought I heard my
neighbor pass by a roadway. I could hear gravel
squinching underneath what I believe were footsteps,
and they're pretty far away. But when I'd fallen,
I was really thirsty, and so when I tried to speak,
I could barely croak any-- any cries for help out. And so I cried as best I
could to call out for help, but my neighbor did not
hear me and kept on going. As I heard my neighbor's
footsteps fade away, I had this almost
desperate feeling. I had a shot at getting
saved early, and-- and I'd blown it, and-- because I couldn't yell out. And it was just
an awful feeling. Not only did I miss
getting saved and-- and getting help for myself. Now, I was looking at a night-- a cold, cold night in
front of me, and here I am lying naked on the landing. And at this point, I'd been
crawling for four, five hours, and I was just totally wasted. And she pulled the trigger and
blew the left side of my skull off. And the shot was so forceful
that it seemed simultaneously that when the bullet hit
and the sound went off, the back of my head
hit the concrete. She put the barrel in my temple
and drove it down in there, and I just waited, and I
thought, well, maybe she won't do it, because as far as
she knows, I'm already dead. But she decided she was going to
put another bullet in my head. And I thought, wow,
I'm still alive. Things are really bad, but
they're going to get real worse if I let her pull the trigger. And so I reached up
and grabbed at her, and I grabbed her hands, and
she couldn't pull the trigger. And she actually used her
strength, fighting with me, she pulled me up to my
feet and helped me get up. I wasn't concentrating
so much on her as I was where the
gun was pointed at. She was just struggling with me. I had a plan. I was backing up
towards the door, and I thought, if I
get outside, at least I have a chance of
somebody finding me. There was about 12 feet
between us and to the door, and it was a hard
struggle, because she was drunk and strong, and I was
getting weaker by the moment. We got to the door. She was inside the house. I was outside the house. The door was open. I thought to myself, I have
to let go of her to get away. And when I did, she was
squeezing on the trigger, and the gun went off. [music playing] This SUV tire was coming
straight for me, and I said-- I screamed out, please,
please don't run over my face. I was so worried about him-- the tire was coming
straight at me this way. I was worried
about just crushing my rib cage and my collarbone
and finishing me off. I just felt, like, so
helpless laying there. Well, he ran over me all right. He came over me
with a huge tire, over my right foot first
that had been shot, right up in between
both of my legs. It just felt like I
was being squashed. The tire came up, and I was
like, dude, lay there, and pray to God. Dear God, please help me. Please help me. And I put my arms out at the
sides, and I couldn't look. And he came up over
me with that tire, and he didn't run over my
face, but I'll tell you, he came over me, and he came
right up over onto my pelvis, my abdomen, and then he
took his steering wheel, and he turned that
tire on top of my body, on top of my pelvis and
my hip, and he turned it, and then he came back across
my abdomen and my hips and my pelvis. And then he ran
over my right wrist. And I just laid there
after he backed off of me, and I just said, oh,
my god, I can't believe I've just been run over. It's not enough I shot. This guy had to
run over me, too. He's really trying to kill me. Why? Why? And after he drove off, I
was screaming bloody murder as loud as I could, help, help. I'm screaming so loud. And I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't hear anyone, nothing. Nobody was coming
to my aid, nobody. And I'm laying there,
and I put my arms up, and I'm waving my
busted hand and my arms, and I'm waving, help, help. And this vehicle pulls
up in front of my house, and I thought, oh,
thank god, somebody is going to come help me. And this person was approaching
me so calmly and quietly, and I thought to myself,
this is very strange. This-- something's not right. And oh, my god, it was him. He came back. I realized when I-- if I stayed on the landing
and waited for possible help, that the next day was going to
be a sunny day with no clouds, and I was going to cook myself
to death on the landing. So I couldn't stay
on the landing, but I couldn't get up the steps,
and it was an awful feeling. At one point, I just
lifted my legs together and found that if I put my
heels next to my buttocks, I could raise my
pelvis up a little bit. So now I had a game plan. I can save myself, because
now I can get up the steps. I'd already been pretty foolish
and fallen off the roof, and I didn't want
to add to my folly by trying to go
upstairs in the dark. When I got to the stairs,
I couldn't raise my head to put my head on the
top of the stairs, because when I'd rolled down
the hill, I'd hit a tree. And so the tree-- I'd hit the tree in here, and
it had broken my collarbone and made my neck so stiff, I
couldn't raise my head myself. So as I pushed myself
against the steps, I had to take my left hand
and raise my head on the steps and push like heck
with my heels, and then try to
work my way up the-- the stairs. And so I raised my pelvis up
successfully and put it down, but my pelvis wound
up being right on the top of the-- on the
edge of the first step, and the pain was unbelievable. I could see the door. That was my gateway
to salvation. If I could get inside my door,
I could get to my cell phone and call for help. And I was able to look down
and saw that, at this point, the sun was about four
inches below my feet. I was losing the race. And the gun went off and
hit me on the right foot, in the top of it, and the
bullet bounced on the concrete and hit me in the
right side of the head and really didn't
faze me at all. I was outside,
and I was leaving. Neither of my legs
were working well, so I was crawling
part of the way. I was on one knee. I was just struggling to
get to the other house. And she was behind me beating
me in the head with the butt of the gun, and she
was screaming, die, you mother effer,
die, you mother effer. Why don't you just die? I was trying to just
get away from her, and that wasn't happening. She was right on me. When I got to the
house, I was trying to get somebody's attention. And I fell against the
big picture window, and the panes, when they
broke, the curtains opened up, and I seen two people
in there, and they were hugging each other. And I could tell
they were terrified, and there was no help there. I don't blame them a bit. There's a lady behind me that
still has bullets in the gun, and she's beating
the back of my head that's already been
traumatized enough. I had this part of my scalp was
hanging down and smoking still from the gunshot. Of course, my heart was
pumping, and I was putting out a lot of blood. I didn't think I was
going to make it at all. Went to the second house
and the third house, and I believe the
fourth house, a light came on on-- on the porch. One of the neighbors
opened up the door and was going to help me, and
she pointed the gun at him and said, if you touch him,
I'm putting the next one through your head. [music playing] And he picked me
up by my ankles, and he dragged me on my
back across my driveway over by my carport, over by some
bushes to hide me from view from the street, evidently. I was very scared. I didn't know if he was
going to finish me off, if he was going to
shoot me in the head. But right after he
dragged me, I said, Alan, why did you do this to me? Why? And he didn't say
anything, nothing. He just picked up his two
casings from the bullets that he had shot me with,
and then he walked off. And I never heard
his truck pull away. So I was scared to death. I said to myself,
oh, my gosh, he thinks I'm still this coherent. I just spoke to him. He may come back
and finish me off. So I kept quiet as a mouse. And then all of a sudden, I
heard these engines, these cars coming up the street so fast. [whizzes] I could
just hear them coming. And I said, oh, god,
please, please let that be the police coming to save me. And I heard the doors open
and doors shut, and I-- I just yelled out, I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I was waving my busted arm. I'm here. [crying] I didn't think the stairs
was going to be my issue when I started crawling
hours and hours before, but the stairs were-- were like a monumental
effort to try to go up. So I struggled up,
leaving my skin behind for the next few steps,
until I was about 2/3 of the way up the steps. And at that point, I
was just so wiped out. And now I knew I had a race
between me and the sun. I had a choice at this point. I could either slide down the
steps and die on the landing when the sun hit me
or just work myself up to the next set of steps. I just raised my pelvis up as
high as it could possibly go and pushed myself
across horizontally, and I finally made
it up to my porch. And I thought, got it made now. And I was able to cover the
porch in pretty good time, and the sun was
behind me all the way. And I got to the door, and
then realized I'd set myself up for failure, because when I
remembered rushing outside to go upstairs and get my radio,
and I'd pulled the door shut, and I heard a click. And I had this sinking feeling,
I ought to go back and open the door, and I didn't do it. And I raised my left hand
up, my only good hand. And I could just touch the
bottom of the doorknob. So I was-- what I had
to do is curl myself up inside my doorjamb. I knew it was just
going to hurt like heck, so I just roll myself up on
my broken pelvis and made-- shot my left arm
up and caught the-- enough of the handle, and
I was able to turn it, and the door popped
open, and I had made it. He went back in the
house, and I, at that point, was laying on his-- on the front
porch in front of his door. I heard his wife
talking to him, saying, get that young man in here. And he said, I'm trying, honey. And he opened up the door and
kind of army crawled out to me and grabbed me by the shirt and
pulled me inside of his house. I thought to myself,
the cavalry's here. You know, some-- at least the-- the violence will stop. You know, the
shooting will stop. When she heard the
sirens, I guess she ran back into the house. Oh, she actually
called the police and dialed 9-1-1 and said,
there's a man in my house. I think I might
have to shoot him. And this was long after
the shooting was over. And they took her to jail,
and I got in the ambulance. The injuries were so severe
that I thought she was going to go to prison forever. I'm very thankful to
the EMTs and the police and the neighbors. They came to court, and
they told the truth. She told them that
I was abusing her. Any one of the bullet
wounds could have killed me. Any one of the kicks
could have killed me. The butt of the gun could have
killed me with as many times as she hit me in the back of
the head, and they let her go. I think I survived, because
if she had finished her job and killed me, then she could
have said whatever she wanted to. I needed to let my mother
know that I was still the son she had raised and
that I wasn't an abuser. And being able to tell my
story and living through it was very important to me. I never thought in my whole
life that I'd ever have to dial 9-11, but I sure was there--
glad it was there when I needed it. And I was able to get
through to a man who was a little incredulous. You just fell? I said, no, I fell last night. He says, you've been out there
all night, and you need help? I said, I absolutely need help,
and if you can get it for me, I'd sure appreciate it. There's almost no
place on my body that was either not
bruised or scratched. I stayed one week in
the trauma hospital, and I transferred to Houston
Orthopedic Medical Center for two weeks of rehabilitation. And I received homebound
treatment, and then outpatient treatment,
and I was actually back to work in nine weeks. I survived, because I had
the will to go forward. I had the tremendous
will to live. I wanted to keep going. I don't know what I
needed to live for, but I wanted to keep going. And when I got
desperate to survive, I thought about my
wife, kids, and family. And that gave me the
strength to go on. I honestly felt as though
Satan was in my house that night. I really felt such
an evil presence, like there was a battle
between good and evil going on. And when the
paramedics showed up, he told them that he had shot
a woman in Fort Lauderdale, and he was trying
to kill himself. The detective told me that
his intentions were to rape, torture me, and then murder me. I'm grateful that I'm
not a quadriplegic or that he didn't shoot me in
the head, that I'm not dead. I'm very, very
grateful to be alive. I believe I survived
by the grace of God, the love for my mother,
my family, my friends. I wanted to see them again. I did not want to go
and part this Earth. And from that moment,
I got up the courage, and I turned, and
I confronted him. And I said, what are you doing? I'm your friend. God bless you. And I stared at him
straight in the eyes. I fouled his plan up. I don't think he was able to
carry out what he was planning on doing, because now I was
confronting him face to face, eye to eye. And he was going to cause very
serious bodily harm to me, and then kill me. So I fought for my life,
and I didn't give up.
