SHOT BY HIS MOTHER A little boy’s inspirational recovery.
Joey Slaight was just 8 years old when his mother killed his brother and herself, and left him with a bullet in his brain. Three years later, his family calls him a miracle
n the backyard of his Owasso, Oklahoma, home, 11-year-old Joey Slaight is chasing his 4-year-old twin cousins around a mini trampoline while they play one of their favourite games: monster. “I’m going to get you!” Joey roars as the boys scream in mock terror. It’s a picture of suburban weekend normalcy, but watching it all unfold, Joey’s aunt Andra Munoz can’t quite believe her eyes. “I sit there with my mouth open when he’s playing like any other kid,” says Andra. “There are so many times in a day that I am amazed, that I say, ‘I can’t believe he’s doing that.’”
In fact, three years ago Joey’s family wasn’t sure the playful, happy-go-lucky boy would ever walk or talk again. On Jan. 2, 2015, Joey was shot point-blank in the head by his mother, Morgan Slaight, 27, a recovering methamphetamine addict and schizophrenic, who also shot and killed Joey’s 6-year-old brother, Jaxon, before shooting herself. Bleeding profusely, Joey was helicoptered to the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison, where a CT scan showed the .22-calibre bullet had lodged behind his left eye after ravaging the left frontal lobe of his brain. Doctors cautioned the family that Joey might not survive, much less recover any quality of life. But after three gruelling years in two hospitals and a brain-rehabilitation centre, Joey finally went home on March 31. Now living with his father’s sister, Andra, his legal guardian, her husband, Jason, a high-school football coach, and their four children, Joey continues to defy the odds. “After the shooting we didn’t think we would have 24 more hours with him,” says Andra. “But from day one we saw miracles.”
On the morning of the shooting, Joey was with his mother and brother at Morgan’s sister’s house in Montfort, Wisconsin. Morgan had been released from a psychiatric hospital the previous day—a stay ordered by a court after she had threatened suicide. “Her sister told me her demeanour that
“There are so many times a day that I am amazed” —Andra Munoz
day was weird,” says Andra. “And Morgan knew there was a gun in the house.” Still, no-one expected she might turn it on her boys. Andra, at home in Oklahoma, got the news in a hysterical phone call from her mother. “I couldn’t even breathe,” she recalls. “I remember sitting there thinking, ‘This is the day everything is going to change. Nothing is ever going to be the same again.’”
When the family arrived at the hospital, the news was grim. “Nobody wanted to operate,” says Andra. “They said he was too far gone.” But neurosurgeon Dr Joshua Medow decided to take a chance on surgery. After cutting a flap in Joey’s skull to relieve the intense pressure from his swollen brain, he removed all the bullet fragments he could and put Joey into a medically induced coma. Later that night, Medow was emotional: “I was like, ‘Oh my God, what have I just done? Did I give him a fate worse than death?’” he says. “My wife and my 1-year-old son were sleeping when I got home, and all I wanted to do was pick up my son and hold him.” But just 10 days later Joey miraculously reached for a nurse’s hand, “and it was a flood of emotion,” Medow says. “We gave him the best possible chance.”
It’s one Joey immediately made the most of. After spending two months in hospital, he was transferred to a children’s rehabilitation hospital in Oklahoma and then to Timber Ridge, a paediatric brain-rehab centre in Arkansas, where he spent two gruelling years in physical and speech therapy. He had to relearn basic speech—when he arrived, he was at the level of an 18-monthold, able to speak only three words—and how to regain use of his right arm and leg. His progress stunned his caregivers. “He defies all predictions,” says Becky Mitchum, Joey’s speech pathologist at Timber Ridge. “Joey suffered a catastrophic brain injury. You wouldn’t expect him to have made the gains that he did.” Now Joey is settling into a whole new routine. Andra is enrolling him in the specialeducation program at the local school and signed him up for physical and speech therapy sessions. His grandmother Randa
Slaight, a retired first-grade teacher, is teaching him to read again. The rest of his day-to-day life resembles any other kid’s: he plays Xbox, eats dinner with his family and cuddles up with his aunt for bedtime stories.
He is also rebuilding his relationship with his father, Tyler Slaight, 37, a recovering addict who was estranged from Joey’s mother at the time of the shooting. Tyler says he has been clean for almost three years now—“inspired by Joey.”
“My boy Jaxon is gone,” says Tyler. “It still hurts. I almost lost Joey. I made a decision to get better so I can be there for him for the rest of his life. I have a purpose now.”
The one thing no-one talks about is the shooting, as they follow doctors’ advice to avoid the subject until Joey brings it up himself. Pictures of his mother and brother remain tucked away to avoid upsetting him. No-one knows how much he remembers of that tragic morning—he has never mentioned his mother or brother by name—but the horror of the day is clearly lodged in his subconscious. As Joey recovered his speech, “one of his first words was ‘gun,’” says Andra. Joey is also showing what Andra calls “flickers”—fleeting moments of fear, rage and sadness. “It’s like Dory,” she says, referring to the forgetful fish from the Disney movie. “He’ll get a flicker of something he’s super-sad about, but it’s gone as quick as it comes.” Despite the challenges still to come, “he’s back,” says Randa. “His personality, his kindness, his spirit, all of it is back.” And that gives the family hope for the future. “God saved Joey for a reason,” says Randa. “He has a purpose for him.” Andra agrees. “As with every other miracle, we aren’t able to put a limit on what he can do,” she says. “Nothing is impossible with him.”