Two days after being shot in the head while riding bikes home from a carnival, 13 year-old Justus Suggs lay clinging to life in a coma at New-Haven Hospital Tuesday. These young boys, one of whom barely escaped a bullet himself, grappled with their friend’s condition — and their own — in an emotional bedside visit.
In the scorching midday heat, five boys walked up to Yale New-Haven’s Children’s Hospital on Howard Avenue Tuesday afternoon, led by a mentor from the Hill named Blest (below at left). Sitting on a wall outside the hospital, Justus’ mother, Tracey Suggs (pictured below at right), waited to welcome the boys.
Suggs had been holding vigil over her son ever since the horror of Saturday night, when a gunman sprayed bullets at Justus and a small group of friends who were biking home from a carnival at Career High School in the Hill.
Outside the hospital, talk still buzzed around what had happened Saturday. Suggs had heard that another boy, also 13, had been shot in the hand that night. She recounted her own tale: She sent Justus to the carnival with friends after he’d spent the day fixing up a dirt bike. Around 10 p.m., Suggs was at home on Davenport Avenue at the computer, listening to music, when she heard a bunch of kids “yelling and banging on the door. ‘Justus needs you, he’s shot!’” The next moments seemed a blur: She raced to Sylvan Avenue. Cops had already cordoned the area off. She tried to get through. “This is a crime scene — step back,” a cop told her. The cop tried to stop her, pushed her back. That’s when things got “crazy.” “I just really wanted to get to him.”
Since then, she’s been by Justus’ bedside. Outside the hospital Tuesday, she stood surrounded by family, well-composed. She kissed a group of cousins goodbye and led the five visiting boys, friends of Justus’ from the Hill, through the revolving hospital door.
In the air-conditioned hospital lobby, a woman told the boys what to expect: Justus is on life support. He can’t move. Just go in and tell him who you are. Try not to touch him too much: Germs might give him an infection.
The group — the boys, Blest and a friend, Tracey Suggs and a couple family members — filed into an elevator. It stopped on an upper floor. As the visitors walked quietly to Justus’ room, someone stopped at a hallway dispenser for a squirt of hand sanitizer.
The boys filed into Justus’ private room, lit by one large window. Sitting in chairs along his bedside, they looked at their friend. Justus lay on his side on the bed, breathing steadily through tubes taped to his face. His head was wrapped in gauze, turning red in places. A sign above the bed read: “Bone removed from R side of back of skull. Do not lay on R side.”
For a while, no one spoke. Beeps from monitors broke through the room. After a few moments, tears emerged from one boy’s eyes. “That’s right, let those emotions out,” said Blest, relieved at the sight. “I was just scared that this was just too normal for you guys.”
Over the last two months, the few blocks near Justus’ house have seen three shootings. Several recent shootings across the city, including the one that killed 13 year-old Jajuana Cole, have been attributed to turf wars. Blest, a Hill activist and rapper who’s working with teens at a Hill summer camp, knows the kids from the neighborhood. He said the kids in the room weren’t staying out on the streets at night getting mixed up in gangs. Justus himself spent most of his time with one of the boys, Aaron, his “assistant,” fixing bikes and catching fish. But like any teen, they could be susceptible to the influence of older kids later down the road.
Blest asked how they felt. “Sad,” came a response. The others stayed quiet. Blest urged them to think about what they were feeling. “This is reality. Not one more mother should have to feel this pain. Not one more. Any of yous — I can’t handle another one of yous lyin’ in this bed.”
The boys stayed quiet as Tracey Suggs stood over her child, fixing his blanket and bending down to kiss his face and say “I love you.” An aunt patted his leg. “Jesus bless you.”
“Pull through this, man,” said Blest. “There’s a bunch of engines waitin’ to be built, a bunch of fish waitin’ to be fried — you catch ‘em, we’ll fry ‘em up!”
Suggs said the boy’s state has been stable. “It’s just now a decision to take him off the breathing machine.” She’s been spending hours by his bedside, talking to him and playing his favorite CD’s on headphones pressed to his ear.
“Go talk to him,” an aunt urged the boys. “Just tell him that ‘I love you’ — that’s all you can say.” The boys stood up, one by one, and spoke quietly to their friend. “Hey Justus.” “It’s me.” They filed out down the hall.
Outside in the rush of heat, no one wanted to talk much. Some worried that their pictures would be in the newspaper. A 13 year-old boy who gave his first initial as “S” (pictured below at left), folded up against the wall outside the hospital entrance, agreed to tell his account of Saturday night.
He’d been riding down Sylvan Avenue with Justus away from the carnival. “There were three of us” on bikes. Some other people nearby were watching two dogs quarrel on the street. “We were just bystanders, then Justus got shot in the head.” One of the bullets put a hole through S’s shorts, barely missing him.
“I saw Justus on the ground and I called the paramedics.” He had no idea why the shots flew. “I didn’t see nobody. All I heard was shots.”
Tuesday was S’s second visit to the hospital. “I feel sad — make me wanna hurt somebody.” What would he say to kids fighting turf wars? “Leave guns, weapons, everything, anything that’s illegal alone ‘cause it’s not right killin’ people.” Like a couple of his friends, S didn’t want to have his picture published, at first.
Blest called him over. Why? he asked. You don’t want kids to see you standing up? “You run away from the positive.” Don’t be afraid.
“It’s about standing up for Justus.” S and his friend, Chris, nodded in consent.
Sad
WE must protect these kids.