Last Tuesday, Amber Reynolds did something she hasn’t been able to do in almost nine years.

She went roller-skating at Edru Skate-A-Rama in Holt with her sister.

It has been a long road to recovery for her since 2000, when as an 11-year-old, a stray bullet hit her as she lay sleeping in her south side Lansing apartment.

“I missed out on a lot of things; it affected my life extremely,” she said. “I didn’t have a regular high school life.”

Reynolds is one of the many casualties of random bullets. She survived getting shot, but not without scars. As we reported in our July 1 issue, a 7-year-old girl was shot in her south side apartment two Sundays ago. Police say that two men walked up to the girl’s apartment on Vincent Court and started firing into it. Police think the bullets were intended for the girl’s parents, but she was struck in the hand in the barrage.

Reynolds’ ordeal took place not too far from the most recent shooting, in a sprawling apartment complex off of Waverly Road near Jolly Road.

When Amber and her family moved into an apartment on Woodbridge Drive, it was winter, and the neighborhood seemed fine. But when the weather started to warm, Reynolds said, the criminals came out. Drug deals were being done in the streets, and gunfire would ring out every night.

“We heard about a bullet going through someone’s house. It didn’t hit anyone; it just went through their house,” Reynolds said. “That’s when my mom said, ‘We gotta get out of here.’ Soon after we heard about that, a bullet came through our house and ended up hitting me.”

On the night she was shot, Reynolds, now 19, went to bed around 9 p.m. Her mother was in the room next door, and her father was downstairs watching television. After Reynolds went to bed, her father heard something hit the house, but he dismissed it. Reynolds’ mother heard her daughter kicking against her bedroom wall, but she too dismissed it, because the girl often kicked in her sleep.

“But I continued to kick, so my mom woke up and came into my room,” she said. “She found me with blood all over the place.”

The bullet entered her back, punctured her spleen and diaphragm and collapsed one of her lungs.

“I remember being in the ambulance, and I couldn’t breathe,” Reynolds recalled. “I kept on saying, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,’ when they were trying to put an oxygen mask one me. I didn’t understand that then. I didn’t know what was happening.

“I remember in the emergency room, my parents were standing outside the doors watching them get me stabilized. They were just holding each other. I thought I was going to die.”

She was flown by helicopter to Ann Arbor, where she was placed on an EKMO machine, which provides oxygen to the blood in place of the lungs. Doctors gave her a 50 percent chance of surviving, and even if she did, they predicted she would have severe brain damage. She was in a coma for two weeks.

Reynolds’ recovery was amazing. But the ordeal had caused her left leg to be paralyzed. She had to undergo intense physical, speech and occupational therapy. The shooting was widely reported in the media, and Reynolds received support from the Lansing community, her school — Dwight Rich — and from people all over the country.

The shooting illuminated a crime problem at her apartment complex. The city of Lansing cracked down to clean it up and forced its owners to increase security.

Later, Reynolds would find out that the bullet that hit her had been fired during a drug deal, and that it was meant for a drug dealer. A 17-year-old, Nicolas Hudson, was sent to jail for the shooting, though he has since been released.

Reynolds recovered, mentally, by going to church. Her parents moved the family to Holt after the shooting, where they have lived since.

“I didn’t understand why God had to save me. Why he had to put me through what he put me though. I was in so much pain afterward because of my leg being paralyzed, and just the memories of the shooting, of me being in the hospital, everything. I would have nightmares,” she said.

There are no specific statistics that show how many innocent bystanders are killed or maimed each year by stray bullets. According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 1999 and 2006, guns contributed to the unintentional deaths of 104 people in Michigan. Seven of those deaths, according to the statistics, were children between the ages of 1 and 14. These incidents can include anything from a hunting accident, to retaliation — in the case of the 7-year-old shot in the hand — or a stray bullet finding an innocent target, as in Reynolds’ case.

In Reynolds’ opinion, the people responsible for her shooting were participating in a lifestyle that gave them comfort and safety, even though it endangered bystanders.
“They can’t fit into someplace, so they find someplace they can fit into, like a group. If they fit in somewhere, they’re safe,” Reynolds said. “Then, they’re going to do whatever they can do to be in a safe environment.

“I’ve forgiven the people who were stupid enough to go out and do drug deals and all that,” she said.

At least one of the men involved in her shooting, she thinks, has a heavy conscience. One of the men sent her a letter stating that he didn’t do it, and he was sorry for what she had to go through.

She’s still leery, however, about being in a city — she remarked that she’d like to move as far into the country as possible. And, she doesn’t understand why people have to have guns.

“I can’t understand why people have to have guns other than for hunting,” she said. “I have friends who love guns. They’ve all told me they look at guns in a completely different way. They’re really into hunting, but at the same time, they’ve never been shot. They know what I’ve gone through, but they don’t know what I’ve gone through and how it’s affected me emotionally, and physically in some parts.”

For all that she went through, Reynolds has turned out well. She graduated from Holt High School in 2008, and last December she entered a program at Ross Medical Education Center to become a medical assistant. Reynolds’ unfortunate exposure to the medical world has caused her to want to help sick people, like so many nurses and doctors did for her.

She still has some paralysis in her left foot. She can’t move her toes or point her foot up. But she recently joined a co-ed softball league and re-taught herself how to run. As far as roller-skating, she’s probably better than most people.

“I only fell twice!” she said. “I had a blast — I was amazed.”