Shooting Victim Malone Battles Back at Muir High : Football: A year after the incident, he earns the starting tight end job with highly rated Mustangs.

It was approaching the end of summer vacation last year, and Shelton Malone of Muir High was busily working out in preparation for his first year of varsity football.

After sitting out the previous season, because he had transferred from cross-town rival Pasadena, Malone was eagerly anticipating the prospect of finally playing for the Mustangs.

Little did Malone, 17 at the time, suspect that his varsity debut was about to be put on hold for a year.

Malone had been training on his bicycle with a friend, Jason Norment, near the Rose Bowl as nightfall approached on a warm Saturday. After finishing their ride, Malone said they stopped to have a drink of Gatorade.

Not long after they sat down, Malone said, they started talking to two acquaintances from the neighborhood. About an hour later, a car drove by and a passenger fired several shots in their direction.

The other three were uninjured, but Malone was shot twice. One bullet struck him in the middle left side of his back and another grazed him in his left ribs.

“The reason I was shot was because those two other guys we were talking to were related to gangs and they shot at them, but I caught the bullets,” Malone said. “It was just my luck. I was just standing there and I was the only one that got shot. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Malone said he didn’t realize what had happened to him at first, although he was in pain and bleeding profusely.

“I don’t think I knew I got hit at first,” he said. “I just got up as fast as I could and ran over to a lady’s house, knocked on her door and asked her to call the paramedics real quick.”

He admits that he was a little more scared when he realized what had happened.

“The first thing I thought was not to panic,” he said. “I knew I was hit and I was worried I was going to die, and I remember my friend Jason kept saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’m with you.’ ”

Malone said it took about 15 minutes for paramedics to arrive, and he was soon rushed to Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena for surgery. During surgery, he said, doctors removed the bullets and also discovered that he had suffered two broken ribs.

After being transferred to Inter-Community Medical Center in Covina, Malone said he was partially paralyzed on his left side.

“At first (doctors) thought I might be paralyzed on one side,” he said. “It was hard for me to move from the waist down on one side.”

He said he thought a lot about his son, Shelton Jr., when he was laying in his hospital bed.

“I was real unsure about my future,” he said. “I just didn’t know what was going to become of me. I just had a son the year before and I didn’t know how I was going to manage. It was hard enough when I was on my feet. I didn’t know how I was going to handle things the way I was.”

A little more than a week after he was hospitalized, Malone regained feeling in his side.

“After a week and a half of exercises with the nurses, I was up on my feet with their assistance,” he said. “It was another week after that when I was finally up on my own. I was still a little weak, but that’s when I could finally get around on my own.”

Malone thinks his recovery was hastened by a steady stream of family and teammates who visited him in the hospital.

“I had a lot of team members come in to see me, like Reggie Reser and Demetrice Martin,” he said. “They all kept a close eye on me. I always had someone there the whole time. That made it a lot easier for me.”

Even after he was back on his feet, his doctor recommended that he stay away from football for two years.

“My private doctor told me I shouldn’t be on the football field for the next two years,” Malone said. “He said there was the possibility of internal bleeding, and I was scared of that.”

Malone wanted to return to the football field sooner, although his first concern was returning for his junior year in school, which had already started.

“I didn’t get back until the second week of the school year, and when I did get back I had staples in me until about a month into school,” he said. “It was hard coming back. I had to change my bandages every day in school because I was still bleeding from the operation.”

Malone said it took most of his junior year before he thought that he was physically ready to think about athletics and football.

“At first I didn’t really feel like I was in the best shape I could be in,” said Malone, who dropped from 190 pounds to 170 after the incident. “I didn’t really get back to the weight I thought I should be at until the end of the school year.”

When he finally did receive clearance from his doctor to play football, it was under the condition that he wear a flak jacket under his jersey to protect his rib cage against a heavy blow.

“I have to wear it to protect my ribs because my doctor says that with one good, hard hit it can open right up again. You’ll never see me in games or practice without it.”

The 6-foot-2, 210-pound Malone has responded well enough to start at tight end for the Mustangs.

But he realizes that he has a lot of catching up to do.

“This is really a new start for me,” Malone said. “I’m looking at it like it’s my first year of football. I never played Pop Warner (youth football) and my only year of football in high school was at Pasadena (on the freshman team). This is my first year on the field with varsity players, so it’s going to be a good experience for me.”

It has not been easy for Malone.

“I feel good to be back on the field, real good,” he said. “There’s a lot of punishment I’ve had to accept because I missed so much time on the field. But I’m working hard at it.”

Said Muir Coach John Tyree: “He still gets a little pain now and then, but he’s a tough kid. Muir kids are tough kids.”

Tyree thinks that Malone has potential to become a solid player.

“He’s unknown at this point, but I think he’ll be pretty well-known after a couple of games,” Tyree said. “He’s rusty but he’s very strong. I’m sure he’s only two or three games away from being in playing shape.”

Malone is hopeful that his play can earn him a college scholarship, but missing his junior season hurt his chances.

“It changed a lot because I haven’t had a chance to be seen yet on film,” he said. “Your 11th grade year is important for getting noticed. I want to go on to college, maybe a Southern college. So I know I’ll have to work that much harder this year.”

Malone is also a good baseball player and track performer who won the Pacific League freshmen-sophomore title in the 110-meter high hurdles in a time of 15.4 seconds as a sophomore.

“If I don’t get a scholarship in football, then I could always get one in track,” he said.

Malone said he doesn’t stay out on the streets of his neighborhood in Altadena as much as he did before.

“I’m much more to myself now than I was before,” Malone said. “I’m not in the streets as much as I used to be. I’m not an outside person anymore, especially with all the shooting that’s been going on around here lately.”