BUFFALO, N.Y. — Less than a year after being shot on a street corner, a young Buffalo man is preparing for his moment in the spotlight.
While police have no idea who shot him or why, he has beaten the odds through the support of friends and family and his love of skating, and SABAH.
It was just after midnight on Friday, May 31.
Jason Phillips remembers "I was going to the store, then they got out if the car and started shooting me in my stomach "
Jason was attacked at the corner of his street East Delavan and Schuele Avenues. Jason wound up with a bullet in his belly, he walked home and woke up his grandmother.
"He didn't have on no shirt, he said I been shot and I could see the bullet hole," said Jason's Grandmother Mary Phillips.
As she was getting up, Jason had already called 911 and the ambulance had already arrived.
"I realize he was hurt worse than I thought, " Mary said.
The shooting came as a shock to all who know him.
"He's sweet, he's kind. I couldn't I couldn't imagine what kind of circumstance could ever produce this" said SABAH Executive Director Sheila O'Brien.
Word spread quickly, Jason participates in Special Olympics, SABAH, as well as several other programs devoted to young people with disabilities. In a flash, this healthy and active young man was in a hospital bed, fighting for his life.
"He had tubes, wherever they could put a needle in a tube it was there," remembers Mary. She added "To see him (like that) took my breath away,"
He spent weeks in the trauma unit at ECMC. The bullet damaged his kidney, liver and pancreas.
"They would tell me everyday I go... no progress yet." His grandmother was there every day. "They didn't give me a lot of hope" Mary said.
She even said the doctors at his December check up were surprised by his recovery. "She looked at him and she said oh my goodness do you look good and she said frankly I didn't think you was going to make it."
Perhaps it had something to do with an incentive put out there by O'Brien. "And so I said well if you get better when you get better would you like to do the solo in the ice show and he got those big ol' eyes and big old smile on his face and he gave," she said.
And you can see why by the welcome back he received from his fellow skaters when he first stepped back on the ice in January. Since then he has been hard at work, preparing for his solo and his return to the spotlight. A man, so close to death just a few months ago, ready to take his bows at center ice, now that is something to celebrate.
He will take his act out onto the ice for real on Sunday, March 8 before a packed Keybank Center at the SABAH "Celebration on Ice."
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