Two Pittsburghers and a bullet
An officer continues to monitor child’s progress and intends to get their families together
This is a story from a few years ago. It’s about race relations, cops who don’t go by the book, kids with guns and random urban violence. It really has nothing to do with defunding the police. Or maybe it does ...
This story has been told only in City Court, which is the first stop in Pittsburgh’s criminal justice system, where arraignments and preliminary hearings crowd the docket with more than a hundred cases on a typical day.
Anthony and Randy are lifelong Pittsburghers. Anthony is an 8-year-old Black kid. Randy is a white Pittsburgh cop. They met a week before Christmas when Randy was the first officer on the scene after Anthony was shot.
It was one of those depressingly typical inner-city “situations” that never seem to make sense to anybody after they’re over. It had already been dark for several hours when Anthony, his two brothers and their friend — the oldest only 12 — got off a bus in front of a convenience store. Just seconds before, a 20-year-old named Orville had fired two shots into the air from his 9 mm handgun in an effort to scare off four young men who were beating up his friend. Blessed with the benefits of the Second Amendment, one of the four apparently returned fire with what the police later determined to be five shots from a .40-caliber handgun.
In response, Orville fired a couple of more shots in their general direction. That’s when Anthony and the boys with him got off the bus. One of those bullets hit Anthony in the leg, severing his femoral artery. When, out of the darkness, Anthony’s older brother began to shout, “You shot my brother!” the whole group scattered. For whatever reason, an adult passerby then placed the profusely bleeding Anthony on top of a garbage can ...
That’s where Randy, the police officer, found him. Cradling Anthony in his arms, Randy took him off the garbage can and laid him on the ground using a nearby pile of newspapers to support his head. With only rudimentary first-aid training, and terrified by the rate at which Anthony was losing blood, Officer Randy desperately tried to keep his fellow Pittsburgher from losing consciousness.
“What’s your name?” “Anthony.”
“You know what’s comin’ up this week?”
“No ...” “Christmas.”
“Oh yeah — Christmas . ... ” Anthony was fading.
With an urgency that betrayed his fear, Randy put his mouth right next to Anthony’s ear.
“What do you want for Christmas?” he practically yelled.
The kid’s energy was dwindling fast.
“A bike ...” Anthony whispered.
“What color bike?” pleaded Randy.
But Anthony had already gone limp.
Within minutes the medics arrived, scooped up Anthony and made a mad dash to Children’s Hospital. Within an incredibly short few minutes, Randy, once again in his police officer mode, along with eight other officers, had located and arrested Orville, the shooter. Then Randy, father of his own two little girls, rushed to Children’s Hospital.
He arrived just as Anthony, freshly infused with lifesaving fluids, was being wheeled out of the emergency room, heading for the operating room on the sixth floor. At that moment, Anthony opened his eyes. With some of the personality, fortitude and spunk that would get him through the months of therapy to come, Anthony looked Officer Randy in the eye and said, “Blue ...”
Managed care and some incredible luck had Anthony home the day before Christmas. He had been home only a couple of hours, when that street cop named Randy from the No. 5 Station showed up with a bright blue bike featuring every imaginable bell and whistle.
He wheeled it right into the house and propped it up in the living room. Later, Anthony’s single mother, unable to afford the extravagance of a Christmas tree, whispered in wonder: “That was the most beautiful bike I’d ever seen.”
She paused, seeming to consider, and then began again, “... and that had nothing to do with what color it was or how much it cost.”
Fast forward six months. Anthony and his bike spent those six months in the house. But finally, Anthony made it back to school — with a walker, and therapy, and special help. And he actually was on that bike a few times.
There’s one more thing you should consider. You know why you’ve never heard this story before? Because the officer involved, who has continued to monitor Anthony’s progress and intends to get their families together this summer, refused to be interviewed by the media for what he did because he was actually afraid that he could get into trouble with his superiors for talking about giving that little Black kid a bicycle for Christmas. That’s what you might call a “morale problem.”
There are about 900 officers on Pittsburgh’s police force. That’s a pretty big barrel.
Sometimes we hear about the bad apples. They should be found and discarded.
But many of those officers are truly extraordinary.
That’s something we Pittsburghers should consider as we interact with our police in the streets from day to day.
And that’s something that really has nothing to do with defunding the police ... or maybe it does.