A $4.95 Pocket Radio Stops Bullet, Saves Life

The pocket radio, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, cost $4.95 and Gary Lee’s wife teased him unmercifully about it. “Why’d you buy that cheap radio?” she kept asking.

She got her answer Tuesday. “Now, I know,” she said. “It was to save his life.”

When a robber shot Lee point-blank with a .25-caliber handgun about 1 a.m., the radio inside a jacket pocket--just over his heart--stopped the bullet.

The copper-jacketed, hollow-point slug could have been lethal. “Definitely, it could have killed him,” said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Doug Tantee.

Lee, 24, took the radio to his night shift as a security guard so he could listen to the New York Giants-San Francisco 49ers game during his break. He rooted for the Giants--their win would help the Rams--but the 49ers won.

“I guess,” said Lee, “it turned out I was lucky anyway.”

Before leaving work at midnight, Lee got a call from his wife, Catherine. She said she was visiting her parents near 61st and Hoover streets, but her car would not start.

Lee told her that he would pick her up. “I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said. In an envelope, he had several hundred dollars that he had saved as a down payment for a new car for her for Christmas.

On the way, Lee stopped for gas at a service station at Broadway and Gage Avenue, then his pickup would not start. He called his wife from the pay phone and said he would try to get a jump.

He noticed two young men, who appeared to be in their late teens or early 20s, moving toward him from an alley. One of them carried a gun.

Lee began running, but they yelled, “Stop or we’ll shoot!” He obeyed and they took his wallet. They took the envelope too.

Then, the gunman shot him anyway. “I felt a little sting,” Lee said. A round hole, rimmed by dark powder burns, appeared on his maroon jacket. “I didn’t feel any blood dripping, but I wondered if I was bleeding inside.”

He made another call, this time dialing 911. Police and paramedics arrived and took off Lee’s jacket, but they could not find a wound.

One of the police officers noticed that Lee’s jacket was thick and looked inside. There was the slug. It had passed through the middle of that cheap radio. The plastic case was bent and cracked from the impact and the heat.

Apparently, the radio was enough of an obstacle to slow the bullet. It had ripped through the jacket’s lining, but did not touch Lee’s shirt.

Police are searching for the two suspects.

“I was thankful to God,” said Lee, who is also a minister at a church near Inglewood.

He was only sorry that he lost the money for his wife’s new car.

Catherine Lee did not mind so much. “I don’t care about any money,” she said. “I want my husband.”