Ed Gavagan - Victim's Impact

 

 

So, when the phone rang that morning, I didn't want to pick it up. I was in a world of pain. I had everything hurt. My body, my head, I was an emotional and a physical wreck. And I looked over at the caller ID and I could see that it was the District Attorney's office calling. And so, I knew that it was Assistant District Attorney Kennedy calling. And I knew what he was calling about, but I didn't know exactly what he wanted. He was calling about a case where five guys were in custody for attempted murder. And they were gang members from a gang called the Latin Kings. And they had come in from Brooklyn on the night before Thanksgiving. And their mission was to kill somebody that night as part of an initiation. They were hoping to move up in the management ranks of the gang, like an outward bound for urban thugs.

 

And you never think that you're going to be the guy whose whole life changes forever because you choose to walk down one side of the street instead of the other side. But as I turned off of Bleecker Street to walk down the block, that night, I picked the right-hand side of the street and I walked into their ambush. And about 15 minutes later, I was being wheeled into the emergency trauma room at St. Vincent's with multiple stab wounds from three different knives. One of them had a 10-inch blade. And the surgeon operated the rest of the night to try and save me. I needed two complete blood transfusions to keep me in place until he could do his work. And I was conscious up until they put me out for the surgery. And I was pretty certain that I was not going to make it. In fact, everybody was so sure that there was no way I could live that they gave my case to the homicide detectives, I guess to save on the paperwork when I eventually died. [audience chuckle] 

 

But they took out organs and they removed about a third of my intestines. And I was on life support. When I came off of life support, the nurse came in with a clipboard and she wanted to talk to me about my insurance. Well, I was self-employed, so I was insurance-free. And they let me though have a special program at St. Vincent's for people with no insurance, which consisted of a bottle of Percocet and a cane and a bag to put all my crap in. And they said-- as they pulled out the morphine and the catheter and the chest tubes and the oxygen mask, they said, "Come back in two weeks, we want to take a look at those stitches."

 

And my mother, who had sat by my bedside for the whole thing, said, "You need to come back to Wyoming," where I grew up and where the whole family was. And she goes, "We got to leave this horrible city. Get a plane ticket and just come back and be safe and get out of here." And I agreed. I felt like I could use a little break. And we flew back to Wyoming, and my two brothers and my sister were there, and they just could not believe what had transpired. And they said, "What the hell went on?"

 

And I said, "You know what? I want to tell you this. I want to tell you everything that happened, but I'm so happy to be alive. I feel so lucky. I want to go out into the mountains, all right?” Because, we grew up in Wyoming, and we have this camping thing. And I said, "Let's drive out into the hills, and we'll make a fire on a hill. I'll look at the stars, and I'll tell you what happened. And you can understand what it was like." So, they're like, "All right, we'll drive out in the mountains. You can tell us a story in front of a big fire. All right?"

 

So, my sister gets in her Honda, and she's like, "Listen, I have to work in the morning, so we got to take two cars so I can drive back." She goes in the Honda with one of my brothers, and I'm with my other brother, and he's got a 1966 GTO. So, we're following her driving out at dusk across the prairie into the mountains. And my brother is driving. He's looking over at me, and he's like, "Man, you look like [beep sound]." And I had lost 40 pounds in the hospital. I was looking pretty skeletal, and I was kind of freaking out at every little bump and everything. And he started to cry, and he's like, "I can't believe. It was really, like, five guys, three knives." And I was like, "Yeah." "But, you know, when I was in college, I was at Notre Dame. I was on the boxing team. So, I knocked one guy out, and they arrested him, and he gave up the names of all the other guys who ran away. So, there are five guys in jail because I got one and knocked him out." 

 

And my brother's like, "Dude. All right, all right, that's cool." [audience chuckle] But he couldn't believe that would be a test of manhood, that three guys with knives would ambush an unarmed guy. And he's looking at me, and he's crying, and that was why he didn't see as we came over the hill that my sister had stopped on the road because there was a herd of antelope crossing. And I didn't have a seatbelt on because when we got in the car, I had so many stitches from the stab wounds and the surgery that the seatbelt hurt too much to put on.

 

And he was looking at me. And we hit my sister's car at 60 miles an hour, [audience aww] and I hit my face on the dashboard, and I went through the windshield. [audience aww] And I came to about 40 yards down the highway, and I could just smell the burning rubber. And I looked and I saw the headlights with crazy angles. We'd torn the back off of my sister's car. Both cars were in the ditch. There's broken glass everywhere and dissing radiators, and they're all screaming.

 

And I think I'm dead again. [audience chuckle] But it hurt so much that I can't imagine that they have this pain after you're dead. And I'm lying there and they all come running over and they're screaming and looking down at me. And I look up and we're in the middle, we’re an hour from anything. There's no phones, there's no lights, there's no houses. I really wanted to get out into the woods. 

 

And we just stood there. Neither car can drive. And the next car that comes along is a pickup truck. And this guy pulls over. Of course, he sees everything that's going on, calls the state troopers. The highway patrol shows up. Trooper gets out, he comes over, he wants everybody's ID. We all give him our driver's license, and he goes, "Well, I'm not writing any tickets tonight. You all have the same last name. You sort this out when you get home. All right? We need to get this guy to the hospital." [audience chuckle] So, they're loading me into the back of this pickup truck, and I'm in bad pain. And as my sister and the pickup driver putting me in, I hear the trooper saying to my brother, "That GTO was a 66?" My brother's like, "Yeah, it had a factory tri-power carburetor on it." And I'm just like, "Wyoming, man. All right, can you get me to the hospital?" 

 

So, we drive into Cheyenne. It's an hour. We get to the hospital, and at that time of night, it's Cheyenne. Mainly all they deal with is car accidents. So, they bring me in, and the nurse on duty goes, "You weren't wearing a seatbelt. Weren’t you?" [audience chuckle] I'm like, "All right," we get up on the thing. She starts to take my shirt off to check my vitals, and she sees stab wounds, surgery, scars, staples, hundreds of stitches. She goes, "Honey, what happened to you? Where did you come from?" [audience laughter] I'm just like, "Listen, just stitch up my face. I need to get out of here. All right? Let me get on my way."

 

So, I take the next plane back to New York City. [laughter and applause] I get here, and I've got my appointment with my surgeon that saved my life. I've got to go in and see him now. The last thing that he told me was, "Stay off your feet and don't take a shower, and I'll see you in two weeks." So, I go in to see him, and he is pissed. It's like he's just restored an old English piece of furniture, and I've taken a hammer to it, [audience chuckle] and he starts looking at me, and he says, "You know what? If you had that seatbelt on, you would have ruptured everything inside of you from the impact, and you'd be dead. So, you actually saved your own life." And I'm like, "Whatever doesn't kill me just hurts me even more. [audience laughter] It's fine."

 

So, the surgeon checks everything out. I'm fine. I've got two black eyes, a broken nose, stitches from my forehead to my brow. My nose, both lips are full of stitches, and I've got broken teeth. He just sends me on my way and I go back to my apartment, and I'm having a hard time. I can't sleep. I've got competing nightmares. I'm being stabbed. I'm in a car crash. I'm in surgery. I just flew through the windshield. I can't eat. I can't go to the bathroom. [audience chuckle] I'm oozing pus and intermittent bloody noses. I just cry. I cry and cry. I'm wracked with sobs. I have no idea what my place on earth is anymore. Nothing is safe. [audience chuckle] 

 

And then I decided to check my phone messages, right? Because the machine is completely full. I've got 36 messages, like, "Beep. This is Bob. I'm here with Ellen. We're waiting for you. You didn't come to the meeting. I can't understand. Ed, you know, I really thought this was important to you. I have to say, I'm very annoyed." "Beep. Ed. Bob, Ellen had to leave. All right, now we're never going to work again. Okay? I don't understand." Next one - "Ed, we've been waiting for the furniture to be delivered. I don't understand what happened." Beep on and on, every. And these people don't even know I've been stabbed. They were business deals that they hadn't been notified.

 

So, I'm in a world of hurt, and I find out my van has been towed while I was in the hospital. And then the phone's ringing, and it's ADA Kennedy. And he wants me to come in and make a victim's impact statement so I can let the criminals know how this has impacted my life. And I don't want to do it. I tell him I don't have the energy. I'm not interested in it. I want to get on. I want to forget everything that's ever happened to me. I have a new chance at life, and I want to go on with it. I don't want to do this. And he tells me that he needs me to do it because it's going to help my case, his case actually.

 

And he says, "What happens is, if you don't come in and make this statement, the criminals come in, and people feel sorry for them because these guys were 17, 18 years old, and they're going to see them in handcuffs and scared and little, and they're going to feel sorry for them." He said, "I want them to hear from the victim's point of view." So, I felt like, "Okay, let me think about this. Okay, I agree. I'll do it. I'll do it for you." And then I think, "You know what? I'm going to be in the courtroom when that guy comes in, and I'll just jump over the rail and strangle him. That'll be great." [audience chuckle] And then I realize, no, because then I'll be in jail, and there'll be four other guys that don't get strangled. So, then I think to myself, "All right, what I'm going to do is write down all of my anger and my hurt and express to this punk what he ruined and how he destroyed my business and my health and my sense in the world that you can’t walk down the street without something bad happening to you." 

 

And it was very important to me to communicate that to him. And then as I played it in my mind, I imagined this kid in court sneering back at me like, "Hey, yeah, yuppie, you got a [beep sound] life now. Well, I have always had a [beep sound] life, and I'm going to have a [beep sound] life going forward. And welcome to your [beep sound] life. Because I don't care about your pain, and I'm not interested in hearing about how things are not working out for you."

 

And I thought to myself, "You know what? I don't want to miss the opportunity to communicate with this kid." My rant is one thing, but I'm going to actually get to look him in the eye. And this is a guy whose scars I'll carry for the rest of my life. And I want to communicate. I wanted to change the equation in his head however I could. So, that's how I found myself in court with my cane. And the judge, they bring him in, he's in handcuffs. He doesn't even look old enough to buy cigarettes at the bodega. 

 

And the judge asked me if I can get up and speak. And I get up, and I look at him, and sure enough, I mean, I want to choke the [beep sound] out of him, but I feel sorry for him. I look at him. He's just a little guy. There's no family members on his side of the courtroom. And I look at him and I go, "You know, you set out that night to kill somebody that you didn't know. And the sentence for murder, which is what you wanted to do, is 25 years to life in New York. Murder one." I said, "But I didn't die. Thanks to the ambulance crew and the skill of a surgeon and my strength and an incredible amount of luck, I'm here, which means you get to listen to me. And it also means that the maximum you can go to prison for is 15 years for attempted murder. But you set out to kill me. So, your intention is what? I think, 25 to life, you should be prepared to deal with. And instead, you're only going to deal with 15 years in prison maximum."

 

And I looked at him, and there were tears were coming down my eyes. And I was thinking, "How am I going to say this?" I said, "You owe me one. You owe me a favor. Because one day, you're going to walk out of prison 10 years early." And he starts to cry, and his hands are cuffed behind his back, and he starts to slam his face down on the table. And I figured I might have got to him. And then I said to him, "You know, on the day you walk out of prison, I want you to remember that you have gotten another chance. You're getting 10 years handed to you, just like I got another chance at my life. And I expect you to remember today and to make the best of that chance. And I will too.”