it’s people with guns, who kill people.

today’s post could also be called, shot in the eye – the aftermath

saturday 18 february 2006

this morning i’m driving in traffic, probably going 15-20 miles an hour. next thing there’s a huge bang next to my car and a blinding pain in my eye. ooh, slow reaction time – it takes a second before i realize that it’s probably a gun-shot. i duck down, coming up shortly after, to what seems like ringing silence. my glasses have come off and i’m still trying to figure out what just happened when i look in the rear-view mirror. in it,  a trickle of blood is slowing oozing down my face. i’m in so much shock, that even though i try to drive on,  the car somehow jerks to a halt in the middle of the road and i stumble out. 
seems it was a shot-gun blast. the cars behind and infront of me are hit as well, though i am the only one bleeding. no one seems to have any idea where the shot came from or why. 
some people from a car dealership call the police and give me some sugar-water because by now i am shaking like a leaf. even worse, i start having difficulty seeing out of my right eye. they eventually decide to drive me to hospital rather than wait for an ambulance. 
so. i have a shot-gun pellet lodged in my head, one centimetre shy of my eye and the doctors think it might do more damage to remove it than to leave it there. the external injury actually doesn’t look bad at all. it’s a little swollen and there’s a tiny hole, but the scary thing is that the vision in that eye is very impaired. i’m referred to an eye-surgeon who thinks that i am hemhorraging behind my eye.  i can see broad shapes, but no detail and i’m wearing an eye-patch as it’s too much of a strain trying to focus an eye which just can’t. so now i do a good imitation of captain hook and i wait. we hope that the blood will drain out of my eye and that my vision will return to normal over the next few days. 

monday 20 february 2006

i find out why i cannot see out of my right eye. it seems that there was a car theft underway in gauteng on saturday morning and as the robbers were making their get-away they tried to run down the security guard who then fired his shot-gun into the air – i just unfortunately happened to put my eye in the path of one of those shot-gun pellets. how silly of me!

this morning:

i get a call from my lawyer. he’s spoken to the lawyer representing the security company responsible. apparently they do not deny employing the security guard. they don’t deny that i exist (which they did originally), they don’t deny that said security guard shot me or that i still have shrapnel lodged in my face or that i have permanent damage to my vision. they don’t deny any of this, but they aver that, in the current climate of lawlessness in south africa, security guards can be expected to discharge their weapons from time to time and can not be held responsible for any innocent by-standers who are hurt as a result. !!!!!!!!!!! according to this line of thinking, the man who a few days ago,  just round the corner from my house, shot after a fleeing cellphone thief, but instead managed to kill a 4 year old at his day school, is not responsible either. 

i can only shake my head in disbelief. 

so we go to court. it’s been almost 3 years since i’ve been shot and will probably be 2 more before we get a court date, but i cannot wait to face them down. imagine that vision – a little blurry in my right eye, but still! one i cannot wait to see.