Not every bullet kills. But upon entering the body at a velocity close to the speed of sound, bullets can really mess you up.

The nine Utahns we talked to learned this firsthand. Several truly cheated death; others still suffer pain or have lost use of vital body parts. Most struggle with anguish but seem to have come away with a renewed sense of purpose. If you have survived being shot, comment below to leave your own accounts, see video interviews with victims, and find organizations dedicated to helping shooting victims.

An Eye for an Eye: LeRoy Heaton
LeRoy Heaton, 84, doesn’t like people sitting on his left side; he gets anxious when he can’t see them. He shares that with his deceased father—both lost their left eyes at a young age. On December 24, 1939, at 14 years old, he found an old .22 rifle in the attic of his family home in Kanab. Heaton was enamored with it, so he cleaned and oiled the firearm, but his older brother, knowing the danger of old guns, tested it by firing three rounds behind a tree for protection before letting Heaton use it. Taking the gun inside to fetch more bullets, Heaton loaded it in the kitchen; as he closed the gun, the bullet exploded before it was locked.

He felt the powder burn his face but was initially unaware of his eye. “I had my hand over it, and I was watching my mother when I moved my hand. Immediately, I knew something was terribly wrong because of her expression,” Heaton says. A piece of shell hit his pupil dead-on. A doctor removed it and sent him home, eye-patched, for Christmas. “Back then, you couldn’t remove a body part without the sanction of two doctors, so we went to Cedar City, where the eye was taken out,” Heaton says. Soon afterward, he bought a glass eye in Salt Lake City, then priced at $5. “I tended to blame my Heavenly Father for not protecting me. I’d ask, ‘Why did you let me lose my eye?’” But, while serving his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the East Coast, he met a woman whose husband had lost his eye, prompting the couple to join the LDS Church. “I figured that’s why I lost my eye, too: to be more devout,” says Heaton, who’s had more good come from the injury than bad. Although his childhood passion was sports, without both eyes, he had no depth perception, so he focused on music. Missing an eye enabled him to receive a college scholarship—he wouldn’t have attended otherwise—and he received a music composition degree, allowing him to pursue a music-teaching career. Heaton often makes light of his situation, and his 66 great-grandchildren enjoy his humor of taking out his fake eye and “looking at himself” or peering around corners. And that incident hasn’t deterred his gun use. “I was out there the very next season, hunting rabbits,” says Heaton, who’s hunted deer most seasons since. “I tell people I’m such a good shot because I can shoot with both eyes open,” he says, laughing. (Austen Diamond)

“Don’t Say a Word”: LaDawn Prue
As 18-year-old LaDawn Prue returned home after work at a Marie Callender’s restaurant on Christmas Eve, 1982, a masked Kenneth Roberts stepped from behind a tree, holding a gun. Placing it against Prue’s head, he said, “Don’t say a word, or I’ll kill you.” Prue says she received “a pure sense of clarity. There was no fear, no trembling.”

As Roberts led her toward his car, she dumped the contents of her purse on her lawn, then dropped the purse, hoping someone would find it. Roberts put Prue in the passenger seat, closed the door, turned, and shot her in the neck through the car window. Prue’s plan to go with him until she could break away when he became distracted while driving instantly changed. “When he shot me, he was obviously not going to give me a chance to get away.” Holding her bleeding neck, she opened the car door and took one step out before Roberts shot her again, in the lower back. He drove off, leaving Prue lying in the street, yelling for help. Minutes later, a neighbor found her and called 911. She was airlifted to University Hospital for surgeries and rehabilitation that included getting used to a wheelchair. Prue was left a paraplegic. Today, she has sensation only down to the top of her legs.

She warns that her feelings about why she was spared sound churchy: “I was always taught that God knew me as an individual. That night, for the first time, I knew it was true. He was with me, and I felt like I was let in on the decision whether to take me home or leave me here. There were obviously things this challenge was supposed to teach me.”

She’s been Miss Wheelchair Utah, a crime victim’s reparation lobbyist, an inspirational speaker and a cruise tour guide. She currently owns an import retail business, Moose B Haven, and sees her future dream job as consulting for handicapped accessibility. Snowmobiling, jet skiing and four wheeling are partly her zest for life and partly “just me rebelling against being the stereotypical crippled girl.” People tell her, “You’re too pretty to be in that wheelchair.” When asked what life would be like without the attack, Prue says, “For all I know, I could be homeless, living in a cardboard box. Life could be so much worse.” (Carolyn Campbell)

Update: Where are all the shooters now? 

A Splinter in Your Eye: Dave Acosta
Officer Dave Acosta was a fairly new SWAT officer when he left Provo to take a job with the Las Vegas Police Department. On an eventful day in 1994, he squared off twice with a suicidal, meth-induced suspect: once while the suspect was walking around with a shotgun in North Las Vegas, and again later that night outside the hospital where they had both been admitted.

That afternoon, Acosta was part of an immediateaction team to respond to the suspect after planned bean-bag rounds knocked him out. The suspect stood up suddenly, so two officers fired; he was hit in the belt and jacket, undeterred and completely mobile with the shotgun. “The sergeant asked me to run and apprehend him after he was shot,” says Acosta, who did and was within 10 feet of the suspect when Acosta was shot by lead pellets from a misfired and spliced bean bag. Acosta thought the suspect had shot him and was prepared to use deadly force when the suspect was knocked unconscious by several more rounds. After the diffusion, Acosta tried to seek medical help. “No one believed me; the paramedics said it was a splinter in my eye. I couldn’t convince anyone. I had three [pellets] in my helmet, some in the Kevlar vest and one through my eye,” Acosta says.

The pellet pierced his left eyeball, left of the retina, but because of the angle, had just punctured and deflated his eye, causing swelling. Doctors told Acosta it was a one in a million chance of not losing his eye or being potentially fatal. As Acosta sat in the hospital, retelling the story to his best friend at 2 a.m., he saw the suspect walk past his room and down the hall. “He was still on meth and was swiping at people with a scalpel he’d stolen. Then [the suspect] ran outside.” So, Acosta ran after him, barely clothed and eye pulsating, and caught up to him outside and squared off, 20 feet away. The suspect began approaching Acosta, who pulled the hammer of his gun, which stopped the suspect. As backup rushed forward, the suspect got on the ground and threw his scalpel to the side.

Now, Acosta teaches officer training with the mentality “Always Win”—as was the case that evening. His eye has mostly recovered. (AD)

“I’m God, and You’re Dead”: Tracy Armstrong
Although he survived being shot, Tracy Armstrong feels that his assailant actually killed him. The three bullets that paralyzed him below the chest also moved his lifelong dream beyond reach. While Armstrong spent years building Blue Springs Lodge, his six cabins near Panguitch Lake, he hasn’t been inside any of them in more than two years. His wheelchair can’t travel the terrain that constituted his workplace for decades.

Armstrong says he built his business on a dream and a prayer. Through his family’s efforts, it produced positive cash flow for the first time in 2005. He envisioned building his own lodge in five years and had firm plans to add a seventh cabin in the fall of 2007. Ironically, the new cabin was slated to be wheelchair accessible.

On August 3, 2007, Armstrong’s plans were shattered when 24-year-old Jasson Hines charged into the lodge office and yelled, “I’m God, and you’re dead!” In slow motion, Armstrong saw fire emerge from the gun before bullets struck him once in the neck and twice in the chest. Doctors later said that one bullet severed his spinal chord as cleanly as a scalpel, while another entered the nerve center of his right arm and the third penetrated his back, scattering a rib bone in pieces and puncturing a lung. Still conscious amid the worst pain of his life, Armstrong “prayed with all my heart that I could live to be with my wife and children.” He believes he’s alive today because that prayer was answered. He further feels that the prayers of others gave him the strength to keep living. He has no idea why his assailant—who remains in a Utah prison— attacked him. An ambulance arrived 20 minutes later. By the time Armstrong and his family had arrived at the hospital, he realized he was paralyzed. He told his daughter he couldn’t dance with her at her prom this spring.

Months later, he returned to a different sort of cabin.

In an outpouring of generosity, friends transformed his garage into handicapped-accessible living quarters that included a bathroom and a room with a view of his patio. Other benefactors offered financial contributions. “I didn’t know how much strangers cared,” Armstrong says.

Armstrong was able to achieve his goal of participating with his daughter at her prom this month. (CC)

Revenge is not mine: Ruben Martinez
On July 4, 2007, just after sunset, Ruben Martinez, then 16, walked to a 7-Eleven store three blocks from his Glendale-area home. A group of guys began antagonizing him; one alleged he knew Martinez, claiming Martinez had been disrespecting him earlier that evening, but eventually left the store. Martinez, confused because he’d never seen them before, began walking home. About a block away from 7-Eleven, a car screeched to a stop behind him, shining bright lights. Four young men jumped out of the car and began beating Martinez. When he tried to protect himself, he was shot in the side with a pistol.

“I didn’t realize it until a few minutes later,” Martinez says. A friend, driving around the block after hearing the gunshot, pulled up to a bewildered Martinez. After lifting up Martinez’s shirt to show him he’d been shot, his friend drove them to University Hospital—Martinez’s home for the next two and a half months.

The bullet had entered his side, hit his bladder and large intestines, then exited his back. Doctors later said he was minutes away from death.

Three years, four surgeries and a bill of more than $100,000 later, Martinez has resumed an active lifestyle, but not without mental unrest. In the hospital, he could only think of revenge. “I would think about it every day. I’d say, ‘I’m not going to forget that face and those tattoos,’ ” Martinez says. While close friends and family visited, they encouraged him in a positive direction, and he realized vengeance would spin a vicious circle, potentially costing him his life. Although he still hasn’t forgotten the face, he’s no longer angry. “I decided to let it go.” Martinez says soon after the incident, his detective had to investigate another case and he never heard back about who his assailants might have been. He imagines his case will never be solved, and the assailants will remain free.

Martinez, who was on probation at the time of the shooting, thinks the shooting may have been a blessing. He was often in trouble with the law and never went to school. “It’s opened my eyes a lot, how education could change my life,” he says. “I want to be the first in my family to graduate high school and go to college. I used to not be close to my family; I want to be a better example for my little brother and sister.” (AD)

“What am I going to tell my mom?”: James Reifenberger
Ten years later, James Reifenberger still wonders why. On May 15, 2000, Reifenberger’s friend, Michael Brown, struck a deal with two young men, agreeing to give them a ride across town for $5. As Brown turned his van around in a parking lot, Reifenberger, sitting in the passenger seat, saw a bright flash accompanied by a loud crack. Brown’s thigh was instantly smoking. From the back seat, one of the men aimed the gun at Brown’s face and pulled the trigger; the firearm jammed. Brown jumped out, pressing the automatic door locks. “He thought I was already out,” Reifenberger recalls. “I went to open the door—it was locked.” Feeling the hot gun barrel near his head, Reifenberger reached back to grab it. He and the shooter wrestled with the gun before it went off, hitting Reifenberger in the neck and torso, shattering the van window. Reifenberger held his throat. The car seat filled with blood. He cried, thinking, “What am I going to tell my mom?” Suddenly, his friend Brown opened the van door.

Reifenberger fell into his arms. “Everything is going to be all right. I called the paramedics,” Brown said. Reifenberger’s last on-scene memory is hearing the two assailants laugh and high-five each other as they walked away. They were never caught.

In a near-death experience, Reifenberger saw his body as if he were standing in front of the van. Later, he died twice while spending three months in a medically induced coma. He awoke weighing just 74 pounds—he’d lost a lung and multiple units of blood. He had to learn how to walk, talk and eat again. “It was eight months before I would walk any distance.” He cries more easily and is more sensitive after the experience. He believes he was spared to be here for is daughter A’Janae, born in 2005. His marriage endured. The experience hardly settled him down—he sky dived on his 35th birthday and continues to ride his Honda CBR 954 RR motorcycle “very quickly.”

He longs to find his friend, Michael Brown, who he believes saved his life and who he hasn’t seen since that fateful night. “I want to let him know that I really did make it.” He can still see his assailants in his head. “I don’t feel anger. What I’d like to know is why.” (CC)

Spider Break: Travis Morgan
Two weeks after graduating from in-house police academy in 2000, rookie Travis Morgan and his field officer received a burglary-in-progress call.

Another officer was already at the corner house where the burglary was taking place when Morgan and his partner turned onto the street. “The guy was just pulling out of the driveway. He saw us and took off,” Morgan recalls. The alleged burglar turned another corner and crashed into a parked car. “We got out, went up to his car and tried to get him to come out. I was on the passenger’s side. Somehow, he got away from the officers on the driver’s side and ran back down the street we had just driven up. We took off after him,” Morgan says.

As Morgan caught the suspect and tried to tackle him, “he was holding up his pants with his right hand and all I can figure is that he pulled a gun from a waistband or pocket with his left hand,” Morgan recalls. “He put the gun over his shoulder, and as I went to grab him and we collided, the gun hit my jaw, and he pulled the trigger. I don’t remember feeling the shot, but I heard the pop. I felt that my jaw wasn’t closing right and blood was coming out.” Morgan fell and rolled, pulling his gun out to shoot the suspect. Just then, his partner jumped on top of the man.

En route by ambulance to the University Medical Center, Morgan asked himself three things: “Can I think? Can I breathe? Can I talk?” Realizing he could do all three, he thought he would live. At the hospital, he learned that the bullet had hit his jaw and shat tered. “There are still pieces of it in my jaw,” he says. The result was a “spider break” that left small cracks everywhere but didn’t shatter the jaw into pieces. “My jaw was wired shut for 2 1/2 months—that was the worst part. I couldn’t eat very well and lost 25 pounds— everything I ate needed to be blended and some things wouldn’t blend. At first, no one understood me, but I got so I could talk.”

He was able to find a silver lining, however. “My wife was 8 1/2 months pregnant with our first child when I was shot. She had to have a C-section and was laid up for a couple of months and couldn’t lift things. But I was home to do everything.” (CC)

Fighting Through It: Lt. Phil Murphy
A quarter-inch and everything would’ve drastically changed in Lt. Phil Murphy’s life.

On April 17, 2005, Murphy, a police officer since 1984, was dispatched, along with Sgt. Barry Nielson, to a domestic violence call at a residence in south Orem. Arriving on the scene, it was eerily quiet, but Murphy saw bruises around the neck of alleged perpetrator David Burns’ live-in girlfriend. They wanted to make an arrest, but were unaware of Burns’ martial-arts background.

The minute the handcuffs came out, things escalated. Burns moved away, looking to escape, so the officers grabbed and slammed him against his doorway and to the ground. As the officers tried to gain control, Murphy heard the first gunshot of the afternoon.

Burns had reached for Nielson’s holstered gun and squeezed the trigger. The bullet missed everyone and hit the apartment’s back metal door. Murphy responded to the shot by holding his gun to Burns’ head. When Burns’ seemed to settle down, Murphy reholstered the gun but didn’t buckle it back in. Then, Burns again began twisting and breaking the officers’ grips. Unfazed by pepper spray, he was able to grab Murphy’s gun and fire one bullet, missing Murphy’s Kevlar vest and penetrating his back, just missing his spine.

“It wasn’t too painful, not incapacitating, just sharp in between my shoulder blades,” Murphy says. Almost immediately, Burns was Tasered and taken down by another officer who’d just arrived.

“There was a lot of shock about being shot by my own gun, as an officer. I never felt it leave my holster. I kept trying to come up with explanations,” says Murphy, who couldn’t sleep for a day or two after, continually replaying the scene in his mind, trying to make sense of it. Ultimately, he came to terms. “You can come out stronger for it. It’s not a reason to just cave in and quit.”

As an officer, Murphy says it was interesting experiencing the victim’s process.

“I never felt like I was dying; I was going to fight through it. Afterward, I was more concerned about what my co-workers went through, seeing it happen,” Murphy says. He had a speedy recovery, taking only one week off work, then on light duty for several weeks—because of a sprained ankle during the arrest, not because of the gun wound. Murphy received a purple heart for being shot in the line of duty, and Burns was sentenced to 15 years in prison. “I absolutely do not harbor ill feelings; that’s not my nature to think like that. It ruined his life—thankfully not mine.” (AD)

“I Carry Her With Me”: Carolyn Tuft
Carolyn Tuft had planned a girls’ night out to buy Valentine’s cards and have dinner with her two daughters, Kirsten and Kait.

Kait was called in to work, so Carolyn and Kirsten headed to Trolley Square. The cheery pink card store seemed inviting. Kirsten giggled at funny gum packages. She chose two, holding them in her hand. Tuft heard shots and thought gang members might be outside the mall. Like mirrors, Cabin Fever’s glass walls reflected the inside of the store, so Tuft didn’t see Sulejman Talovic look at her before he shot through the glass. “I saw a bright flash of light. The glass hit me.” Talovic entered the store and shot off the back of Tuft’s right arm. Shotgun pellets hit her lung. He shot Kirsten, then left the store to reload. Returning, he put the gun against Tuft’s back, shooting away part of her hip. He shot Kirsten in the head. Tuft pulled herself close to her daughter and told her she loved her. Then Kirsten drew her last breath. Facedown on the card store floor, choking on her own blood, Tuft phoned a friend. “I’m dying,” she said. “Can you tell my kids I love them? Can you pick up Kait from work?”

The surgeon who operated on Tuft said, “I don’t know why she’s alive; she’s a fighter.” Tuft feels she lived through life-threatening injuries because her other children still needed her. She describes her former self as adventurous and playful, someone who hiked daily and rode her bike. “Now, my brain wants to run, but my body won’t cooperate. I always hurt. Parts of my body are gone, and they won’t be back. If there is anger, it’s that he took away my body so that I can’t take care of it the way I want to.” Her arm feels like a pin cushion full of needles. Pellets in her body cause lead poisoning. Then there’s the pain of loss. “That tightness in your throat when you are about to cry; it’s like it’s stuck there. Kirsten is always in the back of my head. I carry her with me.” Tuft and her other children rode bikes in Italy, as Kirsten had planned to before she was killed. “I’m here to create memories that keep Kirsten’s memory alive,” says Tuft. ”I want my life to be full of good things, so I have to make them happen.” (CC)