baxter

Janitor
Shot: October 1983 and August 1987
Photographed at the Church Under the Bridge
Waco, Texas

I ran to my car to get my shot gun

Baxter: "I was shooting dice in the park and I was winning. It was late afternoon in October of 1983. I was getting ready to leave the park to take my kids to a fair. The guys I played dice with thought I had something to do with the guy who was cheating, but I wasn't involved. I broke the necklace off the guy accusing me of cheating and I kept it. Then his brother took off running. When I saw him coming back from his car with the gun I was thinking, he's going to kill me--I'd better kill him before he kills me. I ran to my car to get my shotgun. While I was standing at the trunk, trying to load the shot gun he shot me with a 32 snub nose, once in the abdomen, the second time in my arm. He wasn't but ten feet from me. I remember thinking I was going to die. I was very frustrated and mad. I wanted to kill him. I drove myself about six miles to the hospital. When I got to the hospital and I saw the doctors and nurses I released myself, I passed out. I was holding a blood clot the size of a football in my lap. The doctors say they don't know how I made it to the hospital. When I woke up I was in the operating room. I stayed in the hospital about a month, until I could walk. After a few months I went back to work.

He thought the guy had been messing with his girlfriend

"The second time I got shot two of my friends were sitting with me in the park. One of my friends was mad at another friend who wasn't there because he thought the guy had been messing with his girlfriend. I told him, 'If it was me I'd go get my pistol and I'd shoot him in the head or the heart and get it over with.' I was joking. He said, 'I might do that.' He got up and left. When he came back I said, 'Where's the gun?' He let me see it. I said, 'I'm just joking with you, man.' We was all drinking. About thirty minutes later I see the guy he's looking for coming around the corner. I walk out and tell him to go away because my other friend's got a gun. The two friends I'd been sitting with leave. I start walking with them. But the guy with the gun, he figured out I'd warned the guy who'd been messing with his girlfriend. He turned around saying, 'Don't follow me.' I said, 'I ain't following you.' I hollered at my other friend to warn him. Then the guy with the gun turned around, smiled, and shot me in the chest. Boom! He was two feet in front of me. I thought he was playing till he shot me. He was trying to shoot me in the heart, but he shot me on the other side. Then this girl I know and her sister pulled up, they tried to bump him with their car, because he was standing over me to shoot me again. He took off running. I got in another friend's car; we ran out of gas about three blocks down. I walked another block to my house where my people called the ambulance. In surgery they cut me from the top of my chest to my belly button. I lost a year of work. The bullet was close to my spine; it was lodged in my back for fifteen years. Last year they took it out.

You've got to watch your back if you're going to the grocery store

"I carry a gun for protection. In this society everybody carries them. You've got to watch your back if you're going to the grocery store. I'll be with my grand kids and some nut will come around the corner shooting at somebody else. If I've got my pistol they're going to think twice about shooting because they know I'm going to do something to them. I don't go out looking for trouble, but I keep my gun for a back-up."