Brush With Death Gives Him New Reason to Live

Los Angeles Police Officer Rick Webb was already a churchgoer, but he got religion with a bang when an alleged kidnaper shot him between the eyes from 15 feet away. Webb somehow escaped with a wound that needed only a small bandage.

And he learned something about so-called lucky charms.

Webb, 24, slept only four hours in his room at Panorama Community Hospital in Panorama City after the shooting in Sepulveda Tuesday night, he said Wednesday.

“I was so thankful I was alive, I didn’t want to close my eyes,” Webb said. “I was lying up there saying, ‘Thank you, Lord. That bullet could have kept on going. Maybe you have something special you want me to do.’ ”

He knows what that might be, he added.

His sister was stabbed to death in April in an unsolved killing, and his family is raising her 4-year-old son, said Webb, a bachelor. “He looks up to me. Maybe I was kept around to raise him.”

Ironically, Webb said, Tuesday was the first day he had ever gone on duty without a lucky charm, a small piece of jewelry bearing his badge number that his best friend gave him when he graduated from the Police Academy three years ago. The neck chain on which he wore the charm had become tangled, he said.

Webb was shot in a gunfight with a man police identified as David L. Pamperin, 33, of Los Angeles.

Police spokesman Willie Wilson said the shooting occurred when Webb and another officer investigated a reported kidnaping at an apartment at 8633 Columbus Ave. shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday.

When the officers arrived, Pamperin emerged and began shooting, Wilson said. Webb and his partner, John Kokan, 47, returned the fire, he said.

Pamperin fell but managed to reload his weapon and fire several more rounds, one of which struck Webb in the forehead, the police spokesman said. Pamperin was in stable condition in the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center with five bullet wounds in the head, chest, hip and arms, Wilson said.

Webb was hit with a bullet from a small-caliber pistol that lodged under his skin but did not penetrate his skull, police said. Doctors at the hospital “popped out” the bullet, another officer said, stitched the wound and covered it with a small bandage.

Webb described the bullet’s impact as “a real fast, hard thing, like getting hit with a hammer, but I knew there was no hammer.”

Webb said that although blood was running down his face, he placed himself between the gunman and spectators attracted to the scene by the gunfire and willed himself not to lose consciousness.

“I knew the more excited you get the more blood pumps, and I didn’t want to faint. I’ve got an armed suspect that’s already shot me once, and there’s no way I’m going to pass out.

“My biggest concern was this guy getting away, being armed and running down the street, shooting people,” Webb said.

Police said Pamperin had gone to the apartment Tuesday to find his girlfriend, who was staying there with her sister. On Aug. 20, Pamperin had abducted the sister, forced her to a nearby motel room, hit her on the head with a pistol and robbed her of an unknown amount of money, Wilson said.