All these years later, he still laughs about it like it was not a big deal...
Yet he knows just how close he came to dying whenever he feels that familiar stinging pain. Bullet wounds. Three of them. It happened more than fifteen years ago. It was a shootout between his "crew," he told me, and a rival gang. On a hot Brooklyn night, shots rang out. Lots of them. Two rivals were dead, while he was left in critical condition. He survived. But now he's doing a fifty years to life sentence.
He was sitting on a bench in the prison's Infirmary awaiting his turn to see the nurse, when I entered the waiting room after bringing a wheelchair-bound man in for his once a week physical therapy session. I had to stay in the room until the handicapped man I was responsible for was done.
Tito is in his mid-forties. I've seen him all over the prison, but we never had the opportunity to speak. Now, however, I was sitting next to him. With his slender yet strong build, Tito was in good shape. He's a tough character who hangs out with equally tough looking guys. I know all of them by their reputations. In here, everybody knows each other's criminal history. Prison is a world in which there are no secrets.
As I sat on the bench, I couldn't help but notice Tito's discomfort. He squirmed and winced. Not a lot, but enough for me to see he was in pain. I assumed it must have been a sports injury. We struck up a conversation.
After a few minutes of casual talk, he told me, "I got shot. Three bullets. One in my right leg, another in my lower back, and one that went through my neck." Had he not revealed this, I never would have known of his brush with death.
He went on to say that two of the bullets were still inside him, and the doctors thought it best not to try to remove them. They felt, he said, that removing the bullets would be too risky, and besides they were not life-threatening. So, they remained. Tito recovered. But with two dead men to answer for, he and his crew were eventually arrested.
For me, hearing stories of shootouts is nothing new. In the more than forty years I have been incarcerated, I think I've heard it all. I've heard many harrowing tales of survival and the close calls men experienced as bullets flew past them, or like Tito, tore into them.
I said to him, "Wow, thank God you survived." I then added, "I think the good Lord allowed your life to be spared." He shrugged meekly. I could see Tito was not impressed with the idea that God was watching over him.
Tito knows that I attend the prison's chapel services. He knows I believe in Jesus. But I also know he practices Santeria and magic in the belief that the "spirits" he seeks to honor will grant him success and good luck. This is very common in prison, especially with the gangs. But with a sentence of fifty years hanging over him, it doesn't appear as if he was as lucky as he thinks.
D.B.
He was sitting on a bench in the prison's Infirmary awaiting his turn to see the nurse, when I entered the waiting room after bringing a wheelchair-bound man in for his once a week physical therapy session. I had to stay in the room until the handicapped man I was responsible for was done.
Tito is in his mid-forties. I've seen him all over the prison, but we never had the opportunity to speak. Now, however, I was sitting next to him. With his slender yet strong build, Tito was in good shape. He's a tough character who hangs out with equally tough looking guys. I know all of them by their reputations. In here, everybody knows each other's criminal history. Prison is a world in which there are no secrets.
As I sat on the bench, I couldn't help but notice Tito's discomfort. He squirmed and winced. Not a lot, but enough for me to see he was in pain. I assumed it must have been a sports injury. We struck up a conversation.
After a few minutes of casual talk, he told me, "I got shot. Three bullets. One in my right leg, another in my lower back, and one that went through my neck." Had he not revealed this, I never would have known of his brush with death.
He went on to say that two of the bullets were still inside him, and the doctors thought it best not to try to remove them. They felt, he said, that removing the bullets would be too risky, and besides they were not life-threatening. So, they remained. Tito recovered. But with two dead men to answer for, he and his crew were eventually arrested.
For me, hearing stories of shootouts is nothing new. In the more than forty years I have been incarcerated, I think I've heard it all. I've heard many harrowing tales of survival and the close calls men experienced as bullets flew past them, or like Tito, tore into them.
I said to him, "Wow, thank God you survived." I then added, "I think the good Lord allowed your life to be spared." He shrugged meekly. I could see Tito was not impressed with the idea that God was watching over him.
Tito knows that I attend the prison's chapel services. He knows I believe in Jesus. But I also know he practices Santeria and magic in the belief that the "spirits" he seeks to honor will grant him success and good luck. This is very common in prison, especially with the gangs. But with a sentence of fifty years hanging over him, it doesn't appear as if he was as lucky as he thinks.
D.B.
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