Darrell
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Darrell has been shot twice in his life. Growing up his family had firearms, “but they were very rarely used. My dad would go hunting or whatever. But we very rarely used them. I didn’t own my first gun until I joined the police department.” As an officer Darrell carried a gun and was required to take regular firearm operation and safety trainings. Out on patrol one evening Darrell pulled over a “suspicious vehicle so to speak. They got out. They pulled a gun. I got shot in the leg. And they drove off. I was in the hospital for a while. And the recovery was extremely long. We never found out who had done it.” Once he was healed, Darrell left the police department and joined the military where he continued to receive firearm training and bought his first pistol for personal use.
Darrell’s second firearm injury came years later when he was wounded in a targeted attack on the front porch of his home. “I opened up the front door and I reached with my hand to open up my screen door and I got shot. It went through my hand and into my stomach.” Darrell was able to call for help and was flown to the hospital where he underwent several surgeries. Although he has theories about who attacked him and why, investigators were never able to find the assailant. Darrell has struggled with both the physical and mental recovery from his attack and injury. “It was traumatic just getting shot again and not knowing. You know, you’re just kind of terrified. You don’t know if somebody’s going to come around or not come around. It’s caused me to be leery of everyone.”
Darrell has since moved away from the home where he was attacked and although he no longer uses a firearm on the job, he does keep guns in the house. Despite the trauma of his attack and injuries, Darrell’s attitude toward gun use and storage has not changed. “After I got out of the police department and after I got out of military, my pistol has been locked up...My firearm is for home protection.”
As his relationship with his fiancé was falling apart, Darrell was the victim of a targeted attack.
As his relationship with his fiancé was falling apart, Darrell was the victim of a targeted attack.
I met a girl who had three young kids. I was divorced at the time. I have three kids. Two of them lived with their mother. One of them lived with me. She had three little ones: a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and a four-year-old. And we were together for nine years. And we were supposed to get married.
And she opened up a little store down the street from where we lived. A little convenience store. I basically call it a little beer store with potato chips, and Cokes, and mainly beer. I don’t really drink or anything like that. But she had that and had it for a couple of years. And she made friends with this woman. And they become very close. And I knew her, and her husband, and her kids. I wasn’t as apt to just want to hang out and drink by the bonfire all the time because that’s just not my thing. Well, make a long story short, my girlfriend started having an affair with her friend and her husband, unbeknownst to me. I didn’t know this for the longest of time. And then I found out. I tried to save my relationship, tried to do everything I could. The woman that she was having an affair with, she left her husband. And those two got together.
I helped her when all this happened. And then I was helping her pay her light bills and some of her bills because I didn’t know what was going to happen between us. And then I just decided to put my foot down and say, “I’m not doing it anymore. I’m having your lights cut off at the end of the month. You’re about to take care of that yourself because I’m not going to be putting out the bill for you anymore.” So, I had driven to town. And I knew that they had cut the power off that day because they ere backed up to her house and they were taking everything out. And I didn’t give it a second thought. I just went home, and I went to bed.
About three o’clock in the morning there was a loud knock on my door, somebody beating on my door. So, I got up, walked to the front door. I opened up the front door and I reached with my hand to open up my screen door and I got shot. It went through my hand and into my stomach. And I didn’t see who’d done it. I mean I looked – I mean they went through so much crud. They had undone my porch lights. It was dark outside. I lived on a farm. I lived off the street. And they shot me. And then I just ran into the house. And I called my uncle who lived next door. He didn’t answer my phone. And so, I called 911. They came out. My ex-girlfriend did not shoot me. However, I believe that she had some – if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have gotten shot. And I think it had something to do with her newly found girlfriend or whatever – somebody that may know or whatever. But it’s never been solved, so to speak. There were a few words that were issued to me when I got shot. So, hopefully one of these years somebody will come up. And if they say this phrase of words, then I’ll know.
Darrell underwent surgery to repair the nerves in his hand and although he regained mobility and function, he never regained feeling.
Darrell underwent surgery to repair the nerves in his hand and although he regained mobility and function, he never regained feeling.
The second shot, it went through hand and into my stomach area. And it just, like, barely missed my spleen and my kidneys. And so, I was very fortunate in that area. But when it went through my hand, it tore a bunch of the nerves that go to my fingers. And I was in the hospital. I got out after several days. And then I went back in, probably two weeks later, I believe. And they did surgery to repair the nerves to my hand. And they said that they could not actually, you know, guarantee that they were going to work.
So, they did that. And I had to have this brace and have, my hand had to be held a certain direction. I couldn’t use it for eight weeks. I couldn’t pick anything up with it. It was just conformed to this deal. Because if I straightened my hand either way, I could rip that surgery apart and it may not work. Without being – all that happening, it did – I did lose the feelings out of my hand. And they told me that they could go back in and they could try to reattach all the nerves back together again. However, I’d have to go through another 8 – 12-week period without being able to use my hand. And they can’t guarantee. I have a 50/50 shot of getting all the feeling back in my hand. And I opted not to do that surgery because that’s another 8 – 12 weeks I can’t use my hand. And it would limit me from doing what I needed to do. And taking a chance that I might not. So, I’ve just lived with that.
I’m reminded of my shot every day. You touch my hand just right and it just sends little needles out into your fingers and stuff. But I’ve just learned to live with it. I’ve just – I just learned to live with it and it’s just a day-to-day thing now.
After being shot by an unknown assailant, Darrell says, “it’s caused me to be leery of everyone.”
After being shot by an unknown assailant, Darrell says, “it’s caused me to be leery of everyone.”
And it was traumatic just getting shot again and not knowing. You know, you’re just kind of terrified. You don’t know if somebody’s going to come around or not come around. This happened in 2015. And for several years it just caused me to have some issues. It has caused me not to trust nobody. It’s caused me to be leery of everyone. And I’m not so open and honest with people as I used to have been. And it took me a long time to get over the fact that I was shot. You know everybody says time heals. It does to a certain degree. I just, I was very angry. I was extremely angry about it happening and, you know, why? Why did something like this have to happen?
And I lived in a small town. So, everybody and his brother knew what had happened. And so, you know, you walk around. You see them. They look at you. You know that they got to be thinking about certain things. And it was just – it just took me a while to get back into where I just didn’t care about what people thought, what they might’ve heard, or anything else like that. And it just – it took me several years to just get passed it.
Some people just don’t understand. They don’t understand what you go through. They don’t understand what it did to me mentally at the time. You know what I’m saying? And what I’ve had to – just how long it’s taken me to overcome that and to just let it be. And it’s hard to describe that. And you know, I don’t want to sit in there and get all emotional or anything else like that. I just, I try not to discuss it with a whole lot of folks. Only very, very few people other than my family know about what happened.
It’s just devastating to, not just the person that got shot, but their whole entire family. You know what I’m saying? It affects everyone. It affects your neighbors. It affects their way of thinking and how they feel about all that. You know, a lot of people don’t want to get shot. Everybody just wanted to be armed and you know, what are the repercussions of doing that?
Darrell says it’s taken him a long time to get over the fact that he was shot.
Darrell says it’s taken him a long time to get over the fact that he was shot.
It was traumatic just getting shot again. You know, you’re just kind of terrified. You don’t know if somebody’s going to come around or not come around. And for several years it just caused me to have some issues. It has caused me not to trust nobody. It’s caused me to be leery of everyone. And I’m not so open and honest with people as I used to have been. And it took me a long time to get over the fact that I was shot and the fact that I was shot because my girlfriend left me to be involved with another woman. That was an ego blow. It took me several years to get over that. And now I’m over it. I’ve moved away. And I’m just doing what I’m doing now. And I try not to think about it.
I don’t know how I got past it. It was just time. I just tried not to think about it anymore. It was just, I guess, a lesson learned. And I learned a lot from that. I learned that you just can’t take people at their word. And even though you know who they are and – you think you know who they are. And you know, you’re supposed to be in a relationship with somebody. It's not always what it seems to be. And so, therefore, I have a little problem trusting folks.
Darrell chooses not to carry a firearm because he feels it will ultimately lead to “more gun violence.”
Darrell chooses not to carry a firearm because he feels it will ultimately lead to “more gun violence.”
I have guns. I have – my son has several of his guns over here that I keep at my house. But I have a pistol that is still locked up. I don’t ever use it. I have a .22 rifle that my kids bought me. And it’s mainly to shoot like the armadillos or the wild hogs that we have out here on the – on my place that we’ll shoot. Other than that, I don’t have anything to do with guns. I don’t brandish them. I don’t carry them around with me. I don’t conceal them. I don’t have a concealed carry permit. I don’t believe in all this gun crap that’s going on. I don’t like it. And I just think that, you know, we’re getting back to where we shouldn’t be when it comes to – to firearms. I know everybody has a right to have them. But I just – I just think that some firearms should be banned. And I just don’t believe that people should just carry them willy-nilly and tote them everywhere they go. Because I just believe that’s going to cause more gun violence.
Darrell says that parents who have firearms in the house need to be responsible for how they are stored.
Darrell says that parents who have firearms in the house need to be responsible for how they are stored.
I think if you have, if you keep guns in your house, I mean to me, it’s the responsibility of the owner, or the parents, or whoever to keep it locked up, to keep it in a safe, or to keep the gun trigger, you know, the trigger things on them or to keep them unloaded. You know what I’m saying. And just don’t have them laying around where, you know, some kid’s going to walk into his mom and dad’s, you know, nightstand and there’s a gun. Or it’s sitting on top of the dresser or they’re just laying around the house. To me, that’s just irresponsible on – on the people that – that do that. And you know your kids will find that. You’re not home. And even if they’re teenagers, they can find it if they go rummaging through your house and they find it. And then, you know, God forbid they shoot one another. Then you know you’ve got to live with that for the rest of your life. How do you do that? You know what I’m saying. How do you do that?
Darrell recalls, “everybody is there at one minute and then a week later, everybody’s gone.”
Darrell recalls, “everybody is there at one minute and then a week later, everybody’s gone.”
Talk to someone, whether it’s a professional or anybody like that, to get counseling if you need. You know what I’m saying? You know, sort of like, when something happens everybody is there at one minute and then a week later, everybody’s gone. You’re still dealing with it. Everybody was there at the beginning, but then they just left. And so, now you’re still having to deal with that on your own. And so, you know, maybe somebody to check up on them, you know, a week down the road just to make sure that they’re still doing okay. You know what I mean? That would be a suggestion I would have.