Pitcher Velasquez Returns to Team After Being Shot

There was a knock at the door and Tony Velasquez’s mother told him to open it. At 9:30 p.m., she assumed, it could only be his cousin coming by that late.

Velasquez didn’t check the peephole. He didn’t ask who it was.

He turned the locks and began to open the door.

“As soon as I did, it was kicked,” the 20-year-old Velasquez said of the Aug. 26, 1992, incident at his Paramount home.

Velasquez saw a man in the doorway, aiming a handgun at him. It wasn’t his cousin.

Velasquez, a sophomore, did what he hopes to be able to do this year as a middle-inning reliever for the Cal State Dominguez Hills baseball team: He stifled his fear.

Then he attacked the gunman.

“We wrestled with the gun,” said the 5-foot-7, 160-pounder. “He shot once and I turned him to throw him outside and then another shot went off and it got me. It grazed me through my left side near my ribs. It came right out. . . . I didn’t feel like I was shot.”

Other than his mother, Velasquez’s sister was the only other person in the room. She saw her brother dash back inside the house as the gunman lost his balance on the doorstep outside.

“He fell down and my sister slammed the door,” he said. “There were two other guys down the stairs outside with shotguns. They shot like three more times.”

One of these bullets hit Velasquez’s mother, Adolfina, and the bullet passed through her left cheek. Velasquez, who was bleeding, called 911.

Velasquez said his sister saw the gunmen run off.

“I ran outside to see if I could see their car, but I couldn’t,” he said. “I never saw (the gunman’s) face.

“At the hospital, they gave me a tetanus shot and they put some bandages inside to let it heal by itself,” he said. He was out of the hospital the next day.

Velasquez said his mother is fine.

During questioning, Velasquez said the police accused him of holding back information on the gunman.

“They said there was no way I couldn’t see his face,” he said. “They were saying I didn’t want to talk, that I wanted my friends to take care of it. I laughed ‘cause I’m not gang-related.”

Sgt. Tom Harris of the Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday that detectives have found nothing to link Velasquez to a gang. They have no suspects in custody in connection with the shooting, but believe it is connected to other shootings in the area, he said.

School started a week after the incident, and Velasquez told only a few close friends about getting shot. On the first day of class Velasquez walked by his coach, George Wing, said hello and kept walking, not mentioning what had taken place.

“I didn’t want to make a big deal of it,” he said. “I figured he’d find out.”

Wing found out a few days later. “I had to go and pull his shirt up just to see it,” Wing said.

Velasquez, a walk-on last season, missed about a month of fall practice but showed up at workouts every day “just hanging around,” he said.

He started throwing again in November.

“I was glad to be back out there,” Velasquez said. “I didn’t change my thinking of baseball at all.”

Said Wing: “He’s throwing great right now.”