Door wide open, ASU sophomore Bristol Morris sat in the driver’s seat of his Chevy Blazer with no way out and no time to negotiate.

A 9 mm handgun as dark as the Tempe sky that summer night in 2006 emerged from the hand of then-19-year-old Emmry Parker, who had it pointed at Morris’ head.

Parker, one of the instigators of a brief spat with Morris in the parking lot of a Scottsdale nightclub a couple of hours earlier, had parting words for Morris.

“Who’s talking now?”

With no time to emote, let alone judge, his odds, Morris made an instinctive lunge to the passenger seat.

The crack of two rounds ignited and propelled toward Morris, who was only a few feet away.

Between the time Morris heard Parker’s question and the time Parker’s right index finger squeezed the trigger, Morris had surged his torso down and away from the gun, using his left arm to cover the left side of his head and face.  

The bullets tore through Morris’ body in two places: The first bullet traveled through his left bicep, through his arm and into the left side of his chest, lodging in the sensory portion of his spine.   The second bullet entered below his left pectoral (chest), stopping near his 11th rib. 

The metal ricocheted inside him, ripping his insides, scraping his liver and kidney, slicing his bowel and damaging his lung.

As the gunman fled and multiple shooters turned Gus’s New York Pizza parking lot at the corner of University and Rural in Tempe into the O.K. Corral, Morris was sure of two things: He was alive and his legs wouldn’t move.

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Where Morris grew up, death by gunshot is a weekly occurrence.

Richmond, Calif., a city of a little more than 100,000 people on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, had more than 40 homicides during Morris’ senior year of high school in 2004, and it now has the most homicides per capita in California.

According to the private research company Morgan Quitno Press, Richmond was the eighth most dangerous city in the country in 2006 — the year after Morris left.

“There is a good chance that if you go to Richmond and you aren’t from there, you might not come back,” Morris said.

Morris’ parents separated when he was born. His father was a policeman in Richmond, though Morris spent very little time with him.

“My mother pretty much raised me,” Morris said.

His mother, Victoria Taylor, took steps to make sure Morris was tough. She signed Morris up for multiple sports.

“She was one of those moms that pushed me out there to take it like a man,” Morris said.

Football became his favorite. A natural athlete, Morris grew to love contact. Unleashing the frustration of life in a merciless habitat meant playing safety.

“Defense was my favorite spot,” he said. “I’d rather hit than get hit.”

Unlike tackling, Morris said growing up in Richmond was no zero-sum game.

As if trapped in a menacing maze, the idea was to find a path out without losing your head.

For Morris, there was temptation to do what many of his friends were doing.

“So many times I could have stepped in the game and sold drugs,” he said. “I had so many chances and knew so many people I could get it from. But my mom stayed steadily on me. The only thing she pressured me about was staying in school, so I could go to college one day.”

Taylor was determined to see him to it.

“All I could do was show him the right road and hope he takes it,” she said. “And he did.”

While it was tough enough for one man to stay on his own straight and narrow, Morris took responsibility for looking after a group of girls that he considered sisters.

The girls’ parents would send them to Morris’ and Taylor’s house on the weekend to ensure their safety.

“I was raised by a woman and taught how to treat women,” Morris said. “They knew that I wouldn’t let anything happen to them, and it kind of carried over into me looking after them.”

Before he even had his first prom, Morris was a wise man, a dependable friend amid the chaos.

During his junior year at Hercules High School, Morris was a stand-out, racking up interceptions and game-changing tackles for a talented but underachieving team. During the spring of his junior year, however, Morris tore his Achilles’ tendon during track.

Morris made a speedy recovery for his senior season, but wasn’t the same. If he was going to play college football, he’d have to walk on.

“I knew ASU had a good program for walk-ons,” he said.

Morris applied, and because he had maintained a 3.0 GPA, he was accepted.

In the fall of 2005, he was able to escape Richmond.

“[Tempe] was a step below heaven,” he said. “Being able to go out to parties and not have to worry about it getting shot up. People are laughing, just having a good time and there’s nothing to worry about.”

Because of his injury, Morris set his aim to make the team in fall 2006. He began a high-intensity work-out regiment that built his upper body and helped him rehabilitate his Achilles injury. Morris was even in contact with the football coaches, including former head coach Dirk Koetter, who had an eye for Morris’ 6-foot-3-inch, 230-pound frame in the secondary.

After the fall semester, Morris made a trip back to Richmond to visit family and friends for Christmas break. But he never wanted to go back again after that trip.

While he was home, one of his friends was shot in the head after a trip to the mall.

“That was the turning point,” he said. “[I told myself], ‘I am done with this, I’ve got to get out of there, it was just too much.’”

This time Morris made sure his mom came with him. Taylor had to sell personal possessions and borrow money from friends just to fund the trip to Tempe.

By the time Taylor made it to the desert in spring 2006, it seemed the sacrifice had been worth it. Mother and son, a tightly knit unit, were together in a peaceful environment where Morris could live out his dream of being a college football player.

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The unfathomable irony of Morris’ story, of surviving Richmond only to get shot near a place he thought safe, is overshadowed by his willingness to stay true to his values, in light of the potential consequences and regardless of the time or place.

“As soon as it becomes a fight between a guy and a girl, I’m not going to let it happen,” Morris said.

On that summer night in 2006, Morris and two friends, Benjamin Blackman and Chris Samuel, walked out of the Venue in Scottsdale at 2 a.m. after a night of clubbing.

Morris, though, hadn’t been drinking, because he was the designated driver that night.

It was innocent fun in paradise until the sounds of unrest caught Morris’ attention.

“Chris saw some girls arguing with dudes right down by the parking area,” Morris said. “We start walking over to the parking lot and the closer we got, the more the violence escalated.”

Three of Morris’ friends, who were all females, were confronted by a large group who appeared to be teenagers.

The males surrounded the females and even jumped on their car, for reasons unknown to Morris.

He recognized the three females as friends from school and stepped in, much as he had always done back home.

“You could see the main guy balling his fist up like he was going to do something,” Morris said. “That is when I ran up there. I told the guy to be cool, that ‘I’m not trying to fight you, but I can’t let you hit these girls,’” Morris said.

“He did what I raised him to do,” Taylor said. “This time it backfired on him.”

A policeman on horseback broke up the scene just as it was about to turn physical. Instead of identifying names or asking questions, Morris said the officer told the crowd to disperse home.

Morris and Blackman, who were both driving, left Scottsdale and joined the group of females at the normal after-party joint — Gus’s Pizza
They were followed.

“We pulled right in and standing right across from our cars [were] the guys we got into it with,” Morris said.

From his Richmond days, Morris knew this meant big trouble. Morris and friends stayed inside the restaurant for 45 minutes.

The group of males was still outside when they got out. Morris alerted Blackman to watch his back while he walked to his car.

It happened without warning, according to Morris and witnesses.

The perpetrator walked up to Morris’ car and shot him twice — instantly paralyzing him from the waist down.

The gunman, Parker, who was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon but not attempted murder, fled immediately after shooting Morris.

Blackman, who held a registered firearm, shot at Parker, hitting him in the backside.

At least one other gunman fired that night, but the details still aren’t clear.

As the rounds volleyed across the parking lot, Morris lay bleeding profusely, not sure if he would make it.

“The first thing that came to my mind was that I need to pray,” he said, “[because] either I’m going to heaven or hell, and I was praying to God to let me see my mom and granny again.”

After many grueling hours, the surgery was a success. The surgeon couldn’t get to the bullet in Morris’ spine without risking further paralysis, but Morris would survive.

He was not sure what was worse: the constant pain inside his body, friends’ seeing him in a state of weakness, the paranoia of being hunted down in the hospital by the same group that shot him, or seeing his mother’s reaction.

“Mom was there for me growing up and tried to keep me from those situations, and I feel like I disappointed her,” Morris said.

After emerging from a medically induced comma that lasted four days, Morris was in the hospital for more than 10 months.

Though he endured severe pain in his legs and stomach, and was not allowed to drink or eat food for months, Morris was extremely fortunate, according to doctors.

If the bullet that is still lodged in his spine had gone any further, he would have died instantly.

The bad news: According to doctors, Morris would never walk again.
But the young man and his mother refuse to believe that.

Just months ago, contrary to doctors’ predictions, Morris gained feeling in his legs.

He recently showed friends a video of him using his legs to balance and push forward. Morris has no doubt he’ll walk again — it might just be the first step toward again playing the game he’s always loved.

Reach the reporter at nick.ruland@asu.edu.