The Faithful Fighter - GSW Survivor
My name is Jason Lewellyn and I am a gun shot victim survivor and I wanted to tell you my story to prayerfully give others hope. The picture I had posted above had to be removed due to it being too graphic and not suitable for all audiences. It was 3 days after the initial gunshot, 2 surgeries and 3 days in the Intensive care Unit. Therefore I posted a new picture that shows my stack of medical records that reach about a foot high. Look me up on Facebook and friends request me for more pictures. I'm looking to raise money to write and publish a book and possibly even start my own foundation to help others in time of need. Please consider donating to this cause because there are people all around hurting and searching for significance in this world. As a token of my gratitude and your generosity I will send a copy of the book to each and everyone that makes a donation. Please share my story with others, you just might help inspire someone in your life.
The real life story which starts when I was a little kid and a random act of violence on August 12th, 1990 when I was sixteen and nothing but the future ahead of me, until this day my life changed forever.
Story Begins….
As a young boy growing up I fell in love with the game of baseball. I started playing at the age of 8 and idolized Pete Rose. I loved his aggressiveness on the field and even learned to slide head first on my own because that’s what “Charlie Hustle” did. I was a third baseman on my Pee Wee team but I wanted to try catching. There was something about that position and I was drawn to it. I asked the coach if I could catch and he let me, from that moment on I had playing professionally and going to “The Show” as my number one goal. As I continued to play throughout the years I progressed into a prominent catcher and was on every All-Star team, played Junior High and High School ball. At the age of 15 I caught some eyes of professional scouts and college baseball coaches. I was throwing professional times as a catcher in the 9th grade. My whole life of practicing and training as finally started to pay off and I could finally see I was getting closer to my goal. I had scouts watching me and I had plans of attending Appalachian State University to play Division I baseball. In July of 1990 I had just finished up my last summer baseball camp at App State and I was riding high because the coach there wanted me to come and play for his program after I graduated high school and I made a commitment to do just that. After camp was over I came home to a town where we had just moved to three weeks prior to be able to play in a high school baseball program and summer program that was top notch.
On August 12th, 1990 I was headed back home when I began to have car trouble. I had a 1974 VW Bug and I loved that car but it had a loss of power so I decided to stop at a friend’s home close by so I could call my dad. As I pull into the driveway and stopped, I leaned up to turn the key off. As I lean back into the seat after I turned off the key an explosion went off and my head flew back hard against the headrest. My eyes were slightly closed but I could see stuff flying around at the moment the explosion went off. My first thought was that the gas tank had blown up since I was having car trouble. I opened the door and stepped out and I looked down and I couldn’t see anything wrong with me physically. Yet something told me to reach up and touch my chin. When I did that I pulled my hand away and I had a little blood on it, so then I reached up with both hands and cupped them around my chin and then pulled them away. Both of my hands and were covered in blood and I knew at that point something major was wrong. I walked around in front of the car to walk to my friend’s grandparents house next door because they weren’t at home. Continuing to hold pressure I looked down out of the corner of my right eye and I could see my jaw bone sticking outward. I took my right hand and pushed it back in place. My brother was injured also in this event. As we get next door I walked through their carport and out their back deck to look down at my car to see what was wrong with it. All the damage down was the right front vent window was shattered. I proceeded then to walk back up on the deck and sit down at the picnic table. Still holding my chin, the grandparents came up and gave me a towel to hold over my jaw. 911 was called and they were on their way.
Sitting there holding this towel over my jaw my brother walked up to me and asked to see the damage. So I pulled the towel away and he instantly freaked out and told me to cover it back up quickly! He looked me dead in the eye and said, “Try to stay calm ok, but you look like you just got run over by a lawnmower.” I was alert and responsive, very calm and collected. I closed my eyes and bowed my head and said a prayer to God. “God, if it’s my time to go, then take me. If not, then please let me live and to live my life the way I want to”. I opened my eyes and I was still sitting there so I was reassured that I would make it through this. I was young in my faith back then and I never knew what that prayer would become of and I have learned a lot of valuable lessons by living a life outside of God. He definitely let me, but that’s a whole other story. The EMS arrived and the first responder passed out when she saw me. They got me onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. I had a medic behind me keeping pressure on my jaw to stop the bleeding, which I had lost 4 pints of blood at this time. Another medic trying to get an IV in my arm but from loosing so much blood my veins were weak. After 4 tries he finally did. As I am laying on the stretcher in the back of the ambulance they call for AirCare to be on standby. Standby because they didn’t know if I was going to make it or not. I learned that they could look straight down my esophagus with me just sitting there. Over the radio comes a voice and says, “Possible gunshot wound, we have spotted a man on the hill with a rifle”. As soon as I heard that I thought to myself there is no way we just got shot. All I could roll through my mind was “the sniper of the hill like the JFK assassination”. I was only 16 years olds and nothing but the future ahead of me in my baseball career. Suddenly and abruptly stopped. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around that.
With this going on in the back of my mind, losing blood faster than I ever imagined the EMS signaled for AirCare to come and transport me to the local trauma center 45 minutes away. EMS had to take me to the local airport which was only minutes away because there was no way the helicopter could land where we were at. As we are pulling out of the road I heard tires squelching in and I was told that was the Sheriff’s Dept chasing down the guy that had just shot me for no reason. Just a random act of violence with no answer to why. We arrived at the airport and they put me in the AirCare chopper and flew me to Baptist Hospital in Winston Salem, NC. When I arrived and in the emergency room a facial trauma doctor came in and looked me over and asked if I had any questions and how I was feeling. Doing all she could to comfort me, I responded back with a pad and a pen and a simple question. “Will I ever be able to play baseball again”? She assured me I would and I responded with, “Then do whatever you must to get me back to that point”. I underwent emergency surgery to clean up the debris and mangled tissue and bone as you can see in the picture. That was four hours after the accident. I spent three days in the Intensive Care Unit under strict monitoring. On that morning of the third day I went back into surgery to start the reconstruction of my missing lower jaw. I lost between 50-70% of my jawbone, gum, teeth, lower lip and muscle. Keep in mind I had just gotten braces off not even a few months before. I was in surgery for hours where they had taken a part of a rib and modified a titanium plate to screw into the jaw bone that was left. After surgery and recovery I was transferred onto a regular floor. I had a tracheotomy now and my mouth was wired shut for 5 months. Over the next couple of years I ended up having roughly 23 surgeries and procedures. I fought the good fight and ended up coming back and playing high school baseball where was I earned top spot of Team Captain and Defensive Player of the Year Award. Ended up going to a Division III school and played some college baseball for a short period of time. I was never able to regain the stature that I had on the field, but I never gave up from trying my best.
This is a brief description on what happened. The shooter was caught and charged with “Assault With A Deadly Weapon With Intent To Kill Inflicting Serious Injury”. The high powered rifle was a 30/06 and the scope was so tuned in that the Sheriff’s Dept said he could have shot a flea off my hood. He was aiming towards the left side of my head, but luckily I had set back down just in time for the bullet to only knick my chin instead of having my head blown off. It’s been 24 years this coming August and I have had a gut feeling that God was never done with me yet. Maybe this is the time, maybe it isn’t…I just know I have an urgency to step up and be idle no more.
I hope to raise start-up money to get my story out there more widely to give others hope. To know that no matter what happens in our day to day lives, life itself is worth fighting for. Sometimes people just need to hear it from someone that has actually been through it and continues to deal with it on a day to day basis everyday...for the last 24 years. I'm still here and I hope that this perseverance will help others to NEVER GIVE UP.
The real life story which starts when I was a little kid and a random act of violence on August 12th, 1990 when I was sixteen and nothing but the future ahead of me, until this day my life changed forever.
Story Begins….
As a young boy growing up I fell in love with the game of baseball. I started playing at the age of 8 and idolized Pete Rose. I loved his aggressiveness on the field and even learned to slide head first on my own because that’s what “Charlie Hustle” did. I was a third baseman on my Pee Wee team but I wanted to try catching. There was something about that position and I was drawn to it. I asked the coach if I could catch and he let me, from that moment on I had playing professionally and going to “The Show” as my number one goal. As I continued to play throughout the years I progressed into a prominent catcher and was on every All-Star team, played Junior High and High School ball. At the age of 15 I caught some eyes of professional scouts and college baseball coaches. I was throwing professional times as a catcher in the 9th grade. My whole life of practicing and training as finally started to pay off and I could finally see I was getting closer to my goal. I had scouts watching me and I had plans of attending Appalachian State University to play Division I baseball. In July of 1990 I had just finished up my last summer baseball camp at App State and I was riding high because the coach there wanted me to come and play for his program after I graduated high school and I made a commitment to do just that. After camp was over I came home to a town where we had just moved to three weeks prior to be able to play in a high school baseball program and summer program that was top notch.
On August 12th, 1990 I was headed back home when I began to have car trouble. I had a 1974 VW Bug and I loved that car but it had a loss of power so I decided to stop at a friend’s home close by so I could call my dad. As I pull into the driveway and stopped, I leaned up to turn the key off. As I lean back into the seat after I turned off the key an explosion went off and my head flew back hard against the headrest. My eyes were slightly closed but I could see stuff flying around at the moment the explosion went off. My first thought was that the gas tank had blown up since I was having car trouble. I opened the door and stepped out and I looked down and I couldn’t see anything wrong with me physically. Yet something told me to reach up and touch my chin. When I did that I pulled my hand away and I had a little blood on it, so then I reached up with both hands and cupped them around my chin and then pulled them away. Both of my hands and were covered in blood and I knew at that point something major was wrong. I walked around in front of the car to walk to my friend’s grandparents house next door because they weren’t at home. Continuing to hold pressure I looked down out of the corner of my right eye and I could see my jaw bone sticking outward. I took my right hand and pushed it back in place. My brother was injured also in this event. As we get next door I walked through their carport and out their back deck to look down at my car to see what was wrong with it. All the damage down was the right front vent window was shattered. I proceeded then to walk back up on the deck and sit down at the picnic table. Still holding my chin, the grandparents came up and gave me a towel to hold over my jaw. 911 was called and they were on their way.
Sitting there holding this towel over my jaw my brother walked up to me and asked to see the damage. So I pulled the towel away and he instantly freaked out and told me to cover it back up quickly! He looked me dead in the eye and said, “Try to stay calm ok, but you look like you just got run over by a lawnmower.” I was alert and responsive, very calm and collected. I closed my eyes and bowed my head and said a prayer to God. “God, if it’s my time to go, then take me. If not, then please let me live and to live my life the way I want to”. I opened my eyes and I was still sitting there so I was reassured that I would make it through this. I was young in my faith back then and I never knew what that prayer would become of and I have learned a lot of valuable lessons by living a life outside of God. He definitely let me, but that’s a whole other story. The EMS arrived and the first responder passed out when she saw me. They got me onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. I had a medic behind me keeping pressure on my jaw to stop the bleeding, which I had lost 4 pints of blood at this time. Another medic trying to get an IV in my arm but from loosing so much blood my veins were weak. After 4 tries he finally did. As I am laying on the stretcher in the back of the ambulance they call for AirCare to be on standby. Standby because they didn’t know if I was going to make it or not. I learned that they could look straight down my esophagus with me just sitting there. Over the radio comes a voice and says, “Possible gunshot wound, we have spotted a man on the hill with a rifle”. As soon as I heard that I thought to myself there is no way we just got shot. All I could roll through my mind was “the sniper of the hill like the JFK assassination”. I was only 16 years olds and nothing but the future ahead of me in my baseball career. Suddenly and abruptly stopped. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around that.
With this going on in the back of my mind, losing blood faster than I ever imagined the EMS signaled for AirCare to come and transport me to the local trauma center 45 minutes away. EMS had to take me to the local airport which was only minutes away because there was no way the helicopter could land where we were at. As we are pulling out of the road I heard tires squelching in and I was told that was the Sheriff’s Dept chasing down the guy that had just shot me for no reason. Just a random act of violence with no answer to why. We arrived at the airport and they put me in the AirCare chopper and flew me to Baptist Hospital in Winston Salem, NC. When I arrived and in the emergency room a facial trauma doctor came in and looked me over and asked if I had any questions and how I was feeling. Doing all she could to comfort me, I responded back with a pad and a pen and a simple question. “Will I ever be able to play baseball again”? She assured me I would and I responded with, “Then do whatever you must to get me back to that point”. I underwent emergency surgery to clean up the debris and mangled tissue and bone as you can see in the picture. That was four hours after the accident. I spent three days in the Intensive Care Unit under strict monitoring. On that morning of the third day I went back into surgery to start the reconstruction of my missing lower jaw. I lost between 50-70% of my jawbone, gum, teeth, lower lip and muscle. Keep in mind I had just gotten braces off not even a few months before. I was in surgery for hours where they had taken a part of a rib and modified a titanium plate to screw into the jaw bone that was left. After surgery and recovery I was transferred onto a regular floor. I had a tracheotomy now and my mouth was wired shut for 5 months. Over the next couple of years I ended up having roughly 23 surgeries and procedures. I fought the good fight and ended up coming back and playing high school baseball where was I earned top spot of Team Captain and Defensive Player of the Year Award. Ended up going to a Division III school and played some college baseball for a short period of time. I was never able to regain the stature that I had on the field, but I never gave up from trying my best.
This is a brief description on what happened. The shooter was caught and charged with “Assault With A Deadly Weapon With Intent To Kill Inflicting Serious Injury”. The high powered rifle was a 30/06 and the scope was so tuned in that the Sheriff’s Dept said he could have shot a flea off my hood. He was aiming towards the left side of my head, but luckily I had set back down just in time for the bullet to only knick my chin instead of having my head blown off. It’s been 24 years this coming August and I have had a gut feeling that God was never done with me yet. Maybe this is the time, maybe it isn’t…I just know I have an urgency to step up and be idle no more.
I hope to raise start-up money to get my story out there more widely to give others hope. To know that no matter what happens in our day to day lives, life itself is worth fighting for. Sometimes people just need to hear it from someone that has actually been through it and continues to deal with it on a day to day basis everyday...for the last 24 years. I'm still here and I hope that this perseverance will help others to NEVER GIVE UP.
Organizer
Jason Lewellyn
Organizer
Mount Airy, NC