jeanette

Peer Mentor Specialist with Daughters
Shot: November 26 1987
Lynwood California

They pulled out handguns and began shooting

Jeannette: "We'd been having Thanksgiving dinner. It was eight o'clock in the evening; we were on our way out of my father and step mother's house. We were standing on the corner saying our good-byes. I was seventeen and I was holding my one-year-old daughter. There were two boys on bicycles, one thirteen, and one fourteen. They passed our family group and then they came back towards us, stopped their bikes, stood up, pulled out handguns, and began shooting into the crowd of at least sixteen of my family members. My sixteen-year-old brother, Carlos, got shot twice in the back. They shot me once. They shot into the crowd again and my oldest brother, who was twenty-eight, got shot four times. Then they took off on their bikes. They got to the fence dividing the railroad tracks from the homes, jumped the fence, and they were back in their own gang territory. All five of my brothers were gang members. Because the boys on the bikes were so young my brothers believed it was an initiation shooting. A couple of nights before Thanksgiving some of my brother's friends did a shooting in the other gang's neighborhood. As I recall, they shot a little boy, and so there was a retaliation shooting. On that Thanksgiving I was the most critically injured. The bullet traveled through the side of my rib cage, my lungs, and my spinal cord.

"Two weeks later they removed a thirty-eight from my upper back. Before I opened my eyes I could feel my dad there, I felt everything he had been through. I had already lost two other brothers in gang shootings. I thought to myself, I need to open my eyes and smile and let everything be okay. And I did, I opened my eyes, I smiled at my dad, and we just started talking. The first thing my father said was, 'Don't think this is going to stop you from mopping the kitchen floor.' And we just laughed. After that I just knew everything was going to be okay. I knew my attitude was either going to make or break him. I couldn't see him going through anymore hurt or pain. He's not the type to show emotion, and to this day it's very hard to get an, 'I love you,' out of him, and not because he doesn't want to, he doesn't show emotion because he was never allowed to. He does it now with my children and my sister's children, but showing it to us is very hard for him.

I lost my legs and now I lost my daughter too

"My daughter's godparents took her after the shooting. I didn't see her until Christmas because they lived four hours away. My daughter came back to the hospital to visit me and she was calling her Godmother 'momma,' and she looked scared. I thought, I lost my legs, and now I've lost my daughter too. I need to get out of here, I need to get my baby back. It was hard bringing myself home in a Pamper, having my daughter in a Pamper, learning how to take care of myself in a wheel chair, and at the same time learning how to take care of my baby from a wheel chair. When I came home, I really had no help. My father and my step mother were out of the house at least twelve hours a day. I had to deal with my two younger sisters, and my younger brother (this was before he was shot and killed from gang violence). I had to get them off to school. I had to iron my father's shirts and slacks, and make lunch for him. I went back to my responsibilities right away. It was very difficult."