This was an article I wrote in November, 2007, which was subsequently published as a back page editorial in a local publication called Folio Weekly.
The early morning of Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 started off routinely for my friends Kari and Joe (pseudonyms, per their request). They met in the parking lot, bleary eyed and wishing for coffee, and started walking up Jacksonville’s Main Street Bridge to go to work. They anticipated a typical day of drawbridge openings—ensuring the safety of boaters, drivers and pedestrians. As they walked up the bridge they made small talk. It seemed like a typical morning.
Then the car stopped beside them. One thought it was a red sedan. The other thought it was a light colored SUV. The mind plays tricks in times like these. “My first thought was that they were going to ask for directions, but then I thought, ‘This is bad.’” said Kari. The vehicle was full of white boys (and I call them boys, despite not knowing their chronological ages, because they are behaving like boys), but Joe’s main focus was the barrel of their gun. “I knew it was a done deal.” He immediately shouted, “Kari, get down!” and went for cover, but not before the shots rang out. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop! Joe was hit in the back of the neck, and three times in the back. He looked down at his hand, which was covered with blood. Then he turned to look at Kari, who had been screaming but had ominously stopped. Face down on the pavement, she had went down like sack of wet cement as soon as the first shot hit her in the temple. As she fell, she hit the railing and abraded both wrists on the concrete. It felt like her head had exploded. She thought, “So this is how it ends.” She thought of her children, left without a mother, and her future, now over. What she didn’t know until days later was that while she was on the ground they shot her seven more times, like a dog. “As I lost consciousness, the last thing I heard was their laughter as they drove away.”
A childish prank, right? Boys will be boys.
When Kari woke up she was strapped to a backboard. Not good. Kari has fused vertebrae in her neck from a previous injury. If they detached, she might be paralyzed for the rest of her life. And what had happened to Joe? The fireman tried to tell her that he would be fine, but for some reason she couldn’t hear him. They had been shot. Somebody shot them! Kari was rushed to the hospital where she was subjected to a CAT scan and an MRI. She also had blurred vision and a severe concussion. How was she going to pay for all this? The last time the Florida Department of Transportation had approved a raise for bridgetenders in this district was in 2003. Needless to say, the cost of living had far outstripped the salary.
Kari later found out that she had been hit with paintballs, not bullets. She had severe bruising on both arms, her rib cage and her hip, and she had a very large black eye. She still couldn’t see. She has had to see an ophthalmologist and a neurologist. They believe that she will eventually regain her vision once the swelling goes down, but it was a very near thing. Her medical bills will be covered by workman’s compensation, but unfortunately she has lost about a week’s pay, mortgage notwithstanding.
And let’s not overlook the psychological impact of this violent act. Joe and Kari, whose careers revolve around ensuring the safety of others, were the victims of a drive by shooting. In their minds, at first, those bullets were real. Kari does not know how she will bring herself to return to work. Her sense of trust has been completely shattered. She feels changed. Joe said, “There was no place to go. You’re at their mercy, for sure.”
According to Paintball 2Xtremes Magazine, approximately 67,000 paintguns are purchased in this country every month. In a perfect world, kids who become paintball enthusiasts are having good clean fun in a controlled environment, and the people they are shooting put themselves in the line of fire voluntarily. But it could be argued that these kids are also learning that it’s fun to shoot people. And if that lesson is combined with a total lack of moral compass as in this instance, you get kids who decide to take this hobby into the real world. In a nation where you can’t even purchase lawn darts, how is it possible that these heinous paintball crimes are going virtually unnoticed?
Let’s make this perfectly clear: What these kids did was a felony. If they ever get caught, they will have a permanent criminal record that will follow them for the rest of their lives.
Somewhere in this town, there is a parent who owns a light SUV or a red car who knows he or she has a son who loves paintball. This parent should be warned that less than two years ago, another bridgetender was shot by a paintball, and the perpetrator was driving a light colored SUV.
And this was by no means an isolated event. According to news4jax.com, another man was shot by a paintgun two days after this incident, and he may lose the sight in one of his eyes. They were driving a red car, and they laughed at him, too.
This kid had friends with him. Perhaps one of them has a bigger conscience than the rest. Or maybe one of them will brag. Somebody knows something. Maybe these kids will grow up and mature and feel guilty, but chances are they will never pay for what they did. Or even worse, maybe their sense of good clean fun will expand to real bullets.
The reason that these acts are so outrageous, almost more so than a regular drive by shooting, is that there seems to be no sense of the gravity of their acts. They thought it was fun. They laughed. You can find descriptions of paintball as a “relatively” safe sport all over the web. In fact, the policeman on the scene wrote this crime up as simple battery, a misdemeanor defined as “any form of non-consensual, harmful or insulting act”, so no detective was assigned to the case. (And we wonder why there are so many complaints about inaccurate crime statistics in Jacksonville.) The Justice Coalition is trying to get them to upgrade this crime to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, which is a felony that applies when a person knowingly attempts to cause serious bodily injury with a weapon which can kill. This crime certainly meets that definition. Law enforcement must take this seriously or no one else will.
These guys laughed, but rest assured that no one else who felt the impact of those paintballs, whether it be the victims, their families and friends, or all the bridgetenders who walk to work every day in an attempt to make a living, are laughing at all. Not even a little bit.
The View from a Drawbridge 