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     | Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Freak shooting changes Bay City
teen's life forever
Now David Carey 's face reflects little joy at the thought of living. As he rests in his wheelchair, his head held in place by the protective halo supporting his broken neck, relief clearly has given way to darker thoughts and a reality tinged with resignation and loss.
"When it first happened, I was too busy trying to stay alive to worry about anything else," he said one afternoon last week. "But once I got over the hard part, the survival part ... then I got to thinking about things more."
David Carey stares off into space as he ponders those thoughts in private. Just a few months ago, he was a vital 19-year-old from Bay City, Texas, a 6-foot-3 , 190-pound pitching prospect who had come to the desert with a dream.
First, Scottsdale Community College, where he arrived without a scholarship to try out for football and baseball, with an emphasis on the latter. Then, perhaps, Arizona State. From there ... who knows?
A pro career? The big leagues? Larry Smith says he couldn't rule that out, even though Carey , a 1988 graduate of Bay City High School, had not been recruited. Smith, the head baseball coach at Scottsdale, describes Carey as "a raw talent, but the sky was the limit." Now, more than two months after the tragic accidental shooting that left him paralyzed from the waist down, David Carey finds himself in a world of more narrow parameters. Doctors say he never will walk again. He may regain partial use of his left arm, but for now the movements are uncoordinated and the potential for improvement uncertain. Most of his time is spent in Room 308 of the Good Samaritan Hospital Rehabilitation Unit in Phoenix, where he requires assistance for even the simplest of activities. His parents - divorced for 15 years, but brought back together by circumstance - come to visit and help out daily. Friends from school still drop by, but not as often as before. For David Carey , most days are quiet. Too quiet. Too much time to think. At first, he says, there was that feeling of relief, even joy. He was alive. There was a reassuring outpouring of public sympathy, too. People were drawn to his tragedy, and many truly seemed to care. Now, the crowds have thinned, the calls are less frequent, and the media has focused its attentions elsewhere. For most of those who drifted in and out of David Carey 's story, life goes on much as it did before. But not for everyone. David Carey is still in his wheelchair, left with a severed spinal cord and haunting questions. "I think more about all of that now. And, yeah, it bothers me. "Why me? Why anyone?" Why David Carey in particular? Talk to coaches, family - even people who didn't even know him until just a few weeks ago - and "I could understand if he was running the streets, hanging out with the wrong people," his father, David Walter Carey , says. "But he never did any of that stuff." The elder Carey is sitting in a visiting room on R-3 , the floor where many of the hospital's quadriplegics are housed. He has been coming here daily since the week after the shooting, spending about 10 hours a day. His ex-wife, Cora, has been here most of the time, too, except for a quick trip back to Texas. For an already broken family, reality has been shattered and reshaped. At first, the father admits, he couldn't accept that. "But I finally have," he says. The words are unconvincing, and even now he can barely talk about
the atrophied body that houses the still-sharp mind of his son. After a few moments, he turns away, the tears welling up again. "I don't understand," he says softly. "I guess some things you just aren't David Carey doesn't understand, either. He knows the details now and he has watched all the people shake their heads and wonder about how such a thing could have happened, but he still can't begin to fathom the "why" of it all. "Maybe if my room had been arranged differently," he says. "Maybe if I'd moved the bed." Or what if he had picked another school? Other roommates? Such thoughts always are followed by this one: Why would he have done anything different? His only mistake was being a pawn in an incredible game of chance. About 3 a.m. on March 7, Carey was asleep in his room at his Scottsdale apartment complex, his back to the bedroom door. The team was leaving in just a few hours for a road game, and Carey - who was about to be redshirted and knew he would not play - nevertheless was determined to be rested and ready. Out in the living room, one of Carey 's teammates was displaying a 9mm pistol to one of Carey 's roommates. The clip had been removed, and the gun was believed to be empty. One bullet remained in the chamber, however, and when he pulled the trigger, the gun went off. Both were startled, but neither thought much of it until hours later. This is how David Carey became a quadriplegic: A bullet accidentally fired from
an apparently empty gun traveled down a hall, penetrated a bedroom door, traveled over a nightstand and struck him between the shoulder blades as he
slept. From there, it ricocheted up his spine, breaking his neck before it lodged in his jaw, where it rests today. At the time, David Carey had no concept of how long the odds or how absurdly unlucky he had been. All he knew was that suddenly, something was very wrong. "I thought I'd had a stroke," he says. "I couldn't move. When I woke up, I felt like I'd been electrocuted, but then it stopped. Then I felt a lump in my throat, and my mouth began to fill up with blood. I thought I was dreaming. After a minute, I realized I wasn't." He tried to call out for help, but couldn't. Finally, his garbled moans attracted his roommate's attention. An ambulance was called, and Carey was taken to Maricopa Medical Center. He was alive, but the damage was so severe that no one expected him to make it through the day. About 7:15 a.m., Smith got the news from assistant coach Ed Yeager. Another player, Scott Maling, had gone to pick up Carey and his teammates for the trip, only to find police and panic. Smith called Carey 's mother in Bay City, the only phone number he had for David 's family. Cora Carey , recently laid off by the South Texas Nuclear Project, had no money and no way to get to Arizona, so pitching coach Jeff Hird - a student assistant - paid for her ticket. David Walter Carey also was notified, but did not come right away. "They told me he wasn't going to make it," said Carey , a commercial fisherman living on a disability pension in Key West, Fla. "So I waited." And David Carey made it. In a story of cruel twists, this is another: Initial newspaper and radio reports on the incident indicated that Carey was in stable condition. Friends and teammates interpreted this to mean he would be all right. "It wasn't until later in the day that we found out he was critical," recalls Richard Rea, whose son, Clarke, is the catcher for the Scottsdale team. "We raced right over to see what we could do." There, they found Cora Carey , fresh from Texas with 27 cents in her pocket and nowhere to go. By that evening, Mrs. Carey had a home. "It was just one of those situations where you ask yourself, `Could we send the mother off to a hotel?"' Richard Rea says. "No, we couldn't do that." And the Reas suddenly found themselves a big part of David Carey 's story. In the weeks since, Mr. and Mrs. Carey have found shelter at the Ronald McDonald House in Phoenix, but the Reas didn't fade from the picture. They have lent support, financial and otherwise. Mostly, they have tried to keep people from forgetting. Richard Rea, vice president of a local real estate management company, is frustrated by the response. Even though the Careys were able to find a state program to pay David 's medical bills - more than $100,000 to date - Rea worries about what lies ahead. "From here on in, the programs in Arizona are just totally inadequate," he says. "They won't pay for a family member to take care of him, for instance.
They'll pick up his therapy ... but what about the rest? "Where will he live? How does he get around? What sort of special equipment will he require?" Rea talks enthusiastically about the nice things people have done - the wheelchair basketball game at Scottsdale Community College a few weeks ago, the "swap meet" held at the school to raise money - but he is realistic about the bottom line. "Lots of good intentions," he says. "Not much cash." Worse yet, according to Carey 's attorney, Leonard Copple, is that there is little prospect of any. "I'm trying to help the kid because I like him," he says. "But frankly, I don't know if I'll ever make a dime for him." Copple says that David Carey has the perfect lawsuit - and no one worth suing. No criminal charges have been filed against the two youths involved,
and none are expected. That wouldn't preclude personal litigation, of course, but Copple notes that the two are students, and neither comes from a
wealthy background. "From a purely legal standpoint, we can file against those guys," the "Everyone is sorry it happened. But you talk about money, and they don't David Carey doesn't have much to say to them, either. For a brief time after the shooting, he didn't know who was responsible. The pair visited him at the hospital, in fact, before Carey learned the details. "Now that I know ... I don't really want to be around them," Carey says. "When they came to the hospital, they were pretty frightened. "They're still frightened." The walls of R-3 , Room 308 are covered with cards and hand-made signs from well-wishers. Someone has added Houston Astros and San Francisco Giants pennants to a bulletin board, and posters of Nolan Ryan, Will Clark and Roger Clemens receive prominent display. "Astros, Rockets, Oilers ... I like all the Houston teams," Carey says with a faint smile. On this spring afternoon, David Carey is thinking about sports again. It is a pleasant diversion, a way to get away from all this for at least a little while. The previous Friday, he had attended the benefit basketball game at Scottsdale College, his first trip out of the hospital since the shooting. The following day, he went to the Scottsdale baseball team's final home game of the season, though he had to leave after a few innings because of the heat. Now he is waiting for a call from the Phoenix Suns; Neal Walk, a former NBA player who lost the use of his legs and now does some public-relations work for the team, is trying to arrange for Carey to attend that evening's playoff game against Golden State. The two met on R-3 . "I've been getting out a little lately," Carey says. "It's good. You get Soon enough, that won't be a problem. Dr. John Porter, his rehabilitation physician, estimates Carey will be released from the hospital in mid-June, though that currently shapes up as something of a mixed blessing. David Carey talks of finishing school and perhaps pursuing a career in If Carey stays in Arizona, the state will pay only for his therapy. David or his family would have to provide housing, food and transportation. As an alternative, he could enter a nursing home, which the state would subsidize. He also could return to Florida with his father or Texas with his mother. "Just lately, it has really been sinking in that I can't do anything for myself," he says. "I can't feed myself, I can't get a drink, I can't do anything for myself. "That's hard to accept. "Real" hard." And the hardest part, Carey realizes, may be just beginning. Beyond the Reas and Copple and a few others, there has been little tangible help, and the images of a young man from Texas and his tragedy are fading in the local consciousness. People care. People try to help. Then they go on with their lives. David Carey stays behind, in his wheelchair, living a bad dream from which there is no awakening. "You tell people this story, and they insist you're making it up," Leonard Copple says. "No way this sort of thing happens, they tell you, not to a kid like this. "But all you have to do is go down to that hospital and see him, and you know it's real. "God help him. It's real." Copyright notice: All materials in this archive are copyrighted by Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspapers Partnership, L.P., or its news and feature syndicates and wire services. No materials may be directly or indirectly published, posted to Internet and intranet distribution channels, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed in any medium. Neither these materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and non-commercial use.
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