Teen says he’s lucky to be alive after stray bullet struck him in the back of his neck

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV/Gray News) -A 19-year-old student in Colorado says he feels lucky to be alive after a stray bullet hit him near his Texas college.

Jabin Wade said he was heading home in a car with his friends near his school, Prairie View A&M University, when gunshots rang out around them. The school is almost an hour northwest of Houston.

“We heard several bangs, and then we put our heads down, and I felt something hit me in the back of my head,” Wade told KKTV. “My friends were like, ‘Did you get hit?’ I moved my hand, and I had blood all over me.”

Wade said the bullet hit him in the back of the neck, close to his spine. He said he was taken by a helicopter to a Houston hospital, where doctors showed him the medical image of the bullet lodged inside his body.

“The bullet is still in there; it’s actually really close to the artery, so they don’t want to remove it,” Wade said.

For now, Wade believes he will live with the bullet inside him indefinitely.

Prairie View police said Wade had nothing to do with the shooting. Chief Wilton White said Wade was an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire. White said they’re investigating road rage as a possible motive, saying there are reports from witnesses of shots having been fired between two other cars on the road. Police do not believe the vehicle Wade was in was involved.

Police said they have persons of interest identified but no suspects.

The night of the shooting, Wade’s parents got a call in the middle of the night that their son was hurt.

Wade’s mother, Rita, said it was a phone call no parent ever wants to hear.

“It’s just stressful; it’s a lot,” she said. “He was lucky though, as a few seconds later, it could’ve been a different outcome.”

Rita Wade and Wade’s dad got on the first flight they could get out of the Colorado Springs Airport.

Jabin Wade, who has a 3.9 GPA and interns with NASA, said he does not plan to take time off from school because of the shooting injury. He plans to go home with his parents to Colorado and finish the fall semester online and return to in-person classes in the spring.

“I don’t want to take a break ... I have the ball rolling a little bit too fast to really stop right now and take a break, so I feel like I really need to keep working toward my career,” Wade said.

Wade said he suffered a fracture from the shooting in his vertebrae. His doctors tell him he’ll need to wear a brace for several months, but he should fully recover with no permanent damage other than the bullet being left inside him.

Wade’s parents are staying in a Houston hotel indefinitely until their son gets cleared by doctors to fly home. A family member set up a GoFundMe to help with that and any possible medical bills.

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