BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — A Battle Creek youth basketball coach is recovering at home after being shot as an innocent bystander in a Springfield bar parking lot — an injury so severe he says he may live with the damage forever.
Ronald Jamierson returned home Monday after a week in the hospital, three surgeries, a skin graft, and braces inside and outside of his leg. The bullet shattered into fragments on impact.
"Down to my ankle, that's completely gone, and it broke up to my knee, the top of my knee, and the fragment is still in the middle of my shin," Jamierson said. "Big gunshot wound. Took out, I'd say, a third of my calf."
The shooting happened at 1:52 a.m. on Sunday, April 26, in the parking lot of a The Base Bar and Grill on Dickman Road in Springfield. The Calhoun County Sheriff's Office said about 200 people were in the parking lot.
"Everybody just starts running, panicking," Jamierson said. "Soon as I turn around, I heard a gunshot."
Moments later, he felt a burning sensation. He crawled to a car, where a relative found him and sped toward the hospital while Jamierson tried to slow the bleeding.
"Putting my hands on my leg and putting pressure on it," Jamierson said. "I was just having problems breathing and stuff, literally blood, just squirting everywhere. It was like an unreal, movie type thing."
A traffic stop for speeding may have saved his life. A Battle Creek police officer recognized what was happening and took action.
"He literally just grabbed my leg outside the door a little bit and tied it," Jamierson said.
The officer then escorted them to the hospital.
His mother, Tamara Jamierson, said the intervention was critical.
"The blood loss was a concern. They actually told us at the hospital, had the police officers not stopped them, and had not done a tourniquet, that Ronald might not have made it," Tamara Jamierson said.
Tamara Jamierson stayed with her son in the hospital every night during his first week of recovery. She said she is glad he is home but is grateful for the time she had with him.
"I got to hang out in his room with him for for 6-7, days and and today, when they were trying to tell us if he was gonna get to go home or not, when he got ready to go home, I was like, woo!" Tamara Jamierson said.
She hopes sharing their story will encourage someone to come forward with information.
"My family and I just pray that someone will have the courage, the humanity to say something if they know something," Tamara Jamierson said.
Ronald Jamierson said he wants people to put down their weapons.
"I'm really ticked off. I really think everybody should put the guns down and do something productive with their life. It's not getting us nowhere. Look like a jungle out here. And I really want people to put the guns down because I could have lost my leg," Jamierson said.
Despite everything, he said he is focused on recovery and getting back to the kids he coaches.
"Especially getting back to the kids that I coach, a lot of them ended up realizing it was me. So they know I'm a strong dude, because I teach them to be strong too," Jamierson said.
The Calhoun County Sheriff's Office did not have an update on the investigation. As of the latest check, investigators were working to identify the people responsible. Another person was shot and received medical treatment.
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