Donnie was 5’ 7” and 130 pounds. He was also a deer hunter, who, as a young man, had once spent over an our killing a gut-shot buck that ran across the state line and could have gotten him arrested for poaching if he finished it with his rifle. Having lost his knife in the mountainside chase, he ended up beating the poor thing to death with a root torn from a deadfall. Decades later, it then occurred to him, while he was telling this tale to me, that perhaps God had gotten him back for this sin one night a year or two later when he went out drinking with a buddy…
Hitting That Messy Homerun
#62-05: night, minutes, first-person aggressor
“We were out drinking on a corner on Route 40, in Edgewood. The guy I was with was huge, real tall. We were about twenty. On our way out we got into an argument with these five younger guys—sixteen, seventeen—and got out and fought them. We were havin’ a good ol’ time. I’m punchin’ the shit outa this guy and my buddy’s killin’ the others: one under his arm, one by the hair—pounding his face into the car.
“We had won and this guy came runin’ back with a bat, goin’ after my buddy. He was afraid; swingin’ that thing like he was a wild man. My buddy was tryin’ to fend him off with his hands out in front of him, and the guy hit him across the palm and broke his hand. I came runnin’ up behind, and he must have seen me comin,’ because he turned and swung at me while I was flyin’ through the air, and hit me right here [point of skull above forehead].
“I blacked out for an instant when I hit the ground. When I got up all I saw was blood streamin’ down in front of my face. I wasn’t good for anything after that, and I could see him comin’ at me through the blood, so I just got up and ran. We ran to a friend’s house. Somebody called an ambulance and they took me to Falston Hospital. I had a splittin’ headache until I got to the hospital, then the real pain started.
“I wasn’t workin’ at the time and didn’t have any insurance. They didn’t give me any pain medication—not even Tylenol for the headache. They took this thing that looked like a dent popper—you know, the things they use to fix dented cars—with a wood-screw on the end of it, screwed it into my head, and pulled. All I could hear was bone crackin,’ and the pain was shootin’ through my head. There had actually been a dent in my head. They put thirty-seven big wide stitches in my head and kicked me out the next day.
“I didn’t have a regular doctor. No money. No insurance. I had a terrible headache for a while. I ended up taking out the stitches myself.”
-Donnie
A slight depression in the skull and wide scar were still visible 20 years after the injury. This scenario had four indicators for blunt weapons use, and could have been predicted to become a blunt weapon encounter at the outset:
1. Size disparity
2. Numbers disparity
3. Escalation
4. Proximity to housing
