Quedat

When the three bullets slammed into his upper right chest, Michael Haynes was sure he was dying. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

What brings tears to Haynes’ eyes as he recounts the events of last weekend, what chokes off the words before he can speak them, is this: It was all happening in front of his five young children.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I’m going to die. I’m going to die in front of my kids,” Haynes recalled thinking from his intensive care bed at Wishard Memorial Hospital. His words came out in a whisper as the memory overwhelmed him.

“I’m going to die in front of my kids for trying to do something right.”

Haynes, 41, was trying to free a friendly neighborhood dog from the jaws of a pit bull.

A young man was walking the pit bull, on a leash, on Sunday afternoon in the 1200 block of Tecumseh Street about 3 p.m. Chase, the neighborhood dog, bounded up to play.

The tan pit bull tried to mount Chase, which the black-and-white male mixed-breed didn’t appreciate. At that, the pit bull locked onto Chase’s throat and began to violently shake the dog, Haynes said.

The pit bull’s walker let the leash go slack and was laughing, Haynes said. As his children screamed, Haynes ran across the street and yelled at the man to get his dog under control.

“I said, ‘Hey, man, get your dog off of him! Don’t let your dog kill Chase!’ ” Haynes recalled. The young man, his face obscured by dark sunglasses and his body by an oversized shirt, said only, “I can’t.”

Haynes said it didn’t seem the man was afraid he would get bitten if he tried to grab the dog by his collar, for instance. “He just didn’t want to.”

At one point, Haynes lifted Chase in his right arm and was trying to push the pit bull with his left when his wife, Stacy, ran up with a rolling pin and warned him he could get bitten himself.

Haynes said he brandished the rolling pin but never hit the dog with it. Stacy Haynes, meanwhile, had called 911 and was on the telephone with a dispatcher when events took a turn no one expected.

“I thought, he’s going to get Chase free and then the dog is going to attack Michael, worst-case scenario,” Stacy Haynes said.

The dog-walker turned away for an instant, and Haynes thought he was leaving. But when he turned back, he was holding a handgun he had pulled out of his waistband.

“He said, ‘I told you not to touch my (expletive) dog!’ And then he shot me.”

Across the street, on the porch of the home that he, Stacy and their five children had moved into in March, his family watched, horrified. The children screamed hysterically.

The man with the dog took off. Chase ran off. Police arrived first, and then paramedics in an ambulance.

While Haynes recovers in the hospital, the couple’s children — Brittany, 10; Heaven, 6; Madyson, 5; Uriah, 4; and Noah, 3 — are staying with relatives. Stacy Haynes has spent most of the week at the hospital, with her husband during visiting hours and in the family lounge overnight. Other family members regularly join them.

It’s unclear when Haynes will be discharged, although he is improving. Doctors opted to leave the three bullets inside his body, including the one that ricocheted off a rib and lodged in his right lung.

Now Stacy doesn’t worry that her husband won’t live, but other worries are moving to the forefront.

For one, the children are traumatized by what they saw, so the Hayneses feel they have to move.

Also, Michael Haynes works for Rent-a-Center and doesn’t know when he will be well enough to lift furniture.

Stacy Haynes is a stay-at-home mom. Michael Haynes does not have health insurance and is working with Wishard on a payment plan. But the family’s finances could quickly become strained.

A fund to collect donations could be set up soon, though details are pending.

Police still are looking for the shooter and his dog. Haynes said he had never seen the man or the dog before, but neighbors have said they recognized him. The couple blame Chase’s owners almost as much as the man with the gun, they said, because that dog should not have been loose.

Still, they said, Chase is at least friendly, whereas the pit bull was menacing him and the man didn’t even try to loosen his dog’s death grip. And nothing justified the shooting, the Hayneses said.

For now, they focus on recovery and are grateful for support they have received.

“Family, friends, just knowing that people are praying for him,” Stacy Haynes said. “And it helps that every day I see him progressing a little bit more.”

via [IndyStar]