Coming Back From the Sidelines : A Gang Bullet Shattered Martin Hernandez’s Dreams, but He’s Going Beyond the Pain to Rebuild His Life

Beginning with today’s profile of Martin Hernandez, a gunshot victim who battled back from paralysis to graduate from Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, the Times South Bay Edition kicks off a three-part series on high school students who have overcome the odds to graduate this year. A snapshot taken on prom night reveals the pain of Martin Hernandez. His eyes are puffy, his smile forced. It is clear he has been crying.

He is in a wheelchair, dressed in a black tuxedo with white lapels, matching tie and dress shirt. His date sports a strapless black dress, and a corsage of red roses rests on the table where they are seated.

The dance last month was supposed to be the joyful culmination of his final year at Leuzinger High School in Lawndale. Instead, it marked his first encounter with classmates and teachers after a shooting in January left him paralyzed from the waist down.

A gang member had fired at Hernandez and a group of friends, mistaking them for rivals as they stood outside a house in Hawthorne. One of the bullets pierced Hernandez’s chest and lodged in his spine, shattering his dream of becoming a deputy sheriff one day.

Now, at 19, he is back in school, trying to rebuild a life broken by the gang violence he so abhorred. Perhaps the most difficult step in his recovery, he says, was the night he wheeled himself into a ballroom at the Sheraton Grande Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where Leuzinger was having its dance.

“It was pretty sentimental,” Hernandez said. “The teachers had been hugging me. People were coming up to me and everybody was like, ‘Welcome back.’ . . . I kept thinking, ‘How come you didn’t visit me when I was in the hospital?’ ”

The question still haunts him, though he insists his near three-month hospital stay was not marked by the emotional upheaval one would expect after such a tragedy.

“Basically, in the hospital, I didn’t show any emotions,” Hernandez said. “I don’t know why. I never even worried about my legs. I never said, ‘Oh, I can’t move my legs, what’s gonna happen to me?’ ”

The night he was shot, Hernandez and a friend stopped at a house on Prairie Avenue near 117th Street to pass time before going to a late movie.

About 20 people, many his teammates on the Leuzinger High baseball team, were hanging around out front, joking about that day’s practice. Shortly after 8 p.m., a gunshot rang out. Hernandez’s legs buckled, and he heard another series of shots.

“I just heard ‘Boom!’ ” he said. “The first shot got me. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t do anything. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ There wasn’t pain, nothing . . . My friend came by. He said, ‘Get up.’ I couldn’t.”

A 16-year-old youth suffered a minor leg wound in the attack.

A suspect, Moses Reyes, 19, of Lennox, was arrested and has since pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder. He is serving a 16-year sentence in state prison. Another alleged gang member, a 16-year-old youth who police said drove Reyes to the site of the shooting, has been sentenced to seven years in the California Youth Authority.

Police said the incident began when Reyes was mistakenly told that Lennox gang rivals were hanging out near Prairie Avenue and 117th Street. When Reyes and the juvenile arrived at the corner, police said, Reyes got out of the car, pointed a gun at the group across the street and fired.

Reyes fired five shots at the crowd, got back into his car and drove off. It wasn’t until later, police said, that Reyes realized he shot the wrong people.

“He (Reyes) truly, truly felt bad” about the shooting, Hawthorne police detective Michael Heffner said. “This is one of the most remorseful interviews that I’ve had. I’ve known this kid and his family for years. I knew he was a gang member. But he had never done anything like this before. He was misinformed. He made a mistake. It’s a real unfortunate situation for all involved.”

Hernandez’s parents, Antonio and Maria Hernandez, have grappled with the deaths of five children from natural causes. The latest incident, his father said, has been almost too much to bear for both them and Hernandez’s five surviving brothers and sisters.

“We’re trying to confront this,” he said. “But it has affected the whole family. We used to all be able to go places together. Now, half will go, the other half will stay to take care of Martin. It’s been very hard on him.”

Antonio Hernandez, a food preparer in a local restaurant, moved the family to Inglewood from Mexico in 1979 to seek a better life. He said his children had successfully resisted the pressures of gangs, and he called for a longer prison sentence for his son’s attacker.

“Martin will be like this all his life,” he said. “After 16 years, the other boy will get out and everything will be the same for him.”

Hernandez said he is not bitter about the incident.

“It happened . . . it happened,” he said. “I’m not going to hold a grudge on him, as long as (Reyes) understands (what he did was wrong). I don’t even worry about it.”

Hernandez’s easygoing nature belies the difficulties he has faced. Following surgery to remove the bullet in his spine, he lost 35 pounds. He has struggled to regain the weight. He points out stretch marks on his arms, where the muscles of his biceps have shrunk three inches. His legs sometimes twitch involuntarily because of his injury. He is stifled by back pain most afternoons and he might need further surgery.

But it is baseball that causes him the most pain. He grew up playing on fields from Lennox to Lawndale, and was a promising left-handed pitcher for Leuzinger at the time of the shooting. Now, when he makes his way around campus, he avoids the baseball diamond.

“I showed up to one of their games,” he said. “It felt kind of weird. They were winning. They needed a relief pitcher and I kept thinking that I could have been there. It just feels bad every day when I have to pass through the baseball field.”

The family’s athletic trophies stand on a shelf in a living room, where Hernandez’s Little League team pictures hang next to a framed certificate he earned last year upon graduation from a regional Sheriff’s Explorer academy.

The Explorer program exposes youths to law enforcement and allows them to work as volunteers at Sheriff’s Department stations. Hernandez said he had hoped to become a sheriff’s deputy, and he credits his friends at the sheriff’s Lennox station, located just blocks from his Inglewood home, for helping him keep a positive mental attitude.

Val Aguilar, the Explorer post adviser, said Hernandez has handled the adversity well.

“Oh God, with all the things he was looking forward to doing and to have it all taken away, he’s doing extremely well,” Aguilar said.

As an example of his determination, friends note that Hernandez’s wheelchair has no handles: He likes to roll himself and he often takes umbrage when others try to help him go places.

After graduating from Leuzinger next week, Hernandez said he will enroll at El Camino College for a year before transferring to USC, where he hopes to attend on a scholarship for disabled athletes.

He also hopes his widely publicized tragedy becomes a grim reminder to students at Leuzinger that violence can strike the unsuspecting at any time.

“It could have happened to anybody,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how popular you are or whether you’re in gangs.”

Police say the incident shows that it can be dangerous for even the most well-meaning youths to gather in known gang areas.

“There’s always too many people on that street,” said Hector Castellanos, one of Hernandez’s closest friends. “I think it’s dangerous. When you get a bunch of people hanging around outside, it seems to bring trouble even if you’re not gang-affiliated. I guess he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Recently, Hernandez joined Teens on Target, a group of young victims of violence who serve as living reminders of the human cost of gang violence. Group members meet once a week at the Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in Downey and also give presentations at Los Angeles County schools. Several in the group use wheelchairs.

Joining the group is part of his search for higher meaning, Hernandez said.

“Why me?” he said, echoing a question asked over and over. “There’s a reason and it’s out there. I have to look for it.”