269: Point Blank #1: What if you pled for your life?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.

I'm excited to announce that today we begin part one of our special five-part limited series called Point Blank. Before we begin, it's important to give you a little context behind this series. If you remember, in September 2021, we did a series of four episodes featuring four people who were at Ground Zero during the attacks of 9/11. For this series, we wanted to do something similar but focused on an incident of a more intimate scale.

As we were researching, we came across an article in the Los Angeles Times by investigative journalist Connor Sheets, whose headline read, It was California's forgotten mass shooting, but for victims, the hell never ends. The article detailed a spree shooting that took place in 2017 in the remote Rancho Tehama area of Northern California.

There, a lone gunman killed his girlfriend, then his neighbors, and then began a shooting spree attacking eight different locations in the span of only 25 minutes, ending at an elementary school and leaving six people dead and 18 wounded.

The killing spree was largely overshadowed by the Las Vegas shooting that dominated the headlines just weeks earlier. And because of the lack of media attention, this small community was left isolated and alone to pick up the pieces. After reading his article, we decided to team up with Connor and the LA Times to produce this five-part series. Over the next five weeks, you'll hear from some of the surviving victims and those impacted by the shooting. A

A man who was shot in his car with his wife. A grandmother whose six-year-old grandson was targeted at the elementary school. A teacher in the classroom who shielded his students while hundreds of rounds were fired outside. The citizen who heroically ran towards the bullets to save the school children. And the sister of the gunman, who grew up with him and gives a rare window into how all of this began.

As you know from the show, we feature only first-person accounts, and many of them speak only from their perspective and what they know. So as the series goes on, if you want to find out more details about the shooting, I encourage you all to search Rancho Tehama Shooting, and you'll find plenty of information. And you can also find the original article by our co-producer on the series, Connor Sheets, on thelatimes.com, titled, It Was California's Forgotten Mass Shooting, But For Victims, The Hell Never Ends.

So without further delay, we bring you the first episode of Point Blank. What if you pled for your life? Featuring Troy McFadden. This guy's just marching very methodically. He's determined to come kill me. I'm begging the guy, you know, please don't. Please don't. And I laid on my back and I'm staring up at the sky. And I said out loud, I said, I'm dead. I'm dead. I said it three times. I'm dead. From Wondery, I'm Whit Misseldyne.

You're listening to This Is Actually Happening with our special limited series, Point Blank. Episode 269, Point Blank, Part 1. What if you pled for your life?

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My dad was a bridge builder his whole life, 35 years, I think, before he retired. You know, watching my older brothers and my father, they were all honorable men, abiding by the rules. I don't believe in breaking the rules. I hate cheating. I watch these sports on TV. I hate guys that cheat, you know. Play it honestly. Lose honestly. You learn more from failure than you ever do from winning.

It's okay if you don't get picked. It's okay if you lose the game. You learn from it. If you're smart, you learn from those things. And I appreciate every failure I've ever had because it made me grow. Went to high school in Red Bluff. Lived in Cottonwood. We were bust. But it was a rural existence, sort of. Almost every day I'd be out in the woods. But I didn't grow up a cowboy. Just a country boy.

My father being in construction, we traveled quite a bit, mostly around the state. We lived overseas for a year in the Caribbean, which was awesome. It kind of opened us up, you know, among my siblings and now even into my own children. We're not afraid to go meet new people. In fact, it's exciting to see new places and we're open to ideas.

We were always going out. Everywhere we went felt like home because you go and meet people. And I guess for me, I still like people in spite of what I've been through.

My father and then me being in construction. You can't phone in the jobs that we did. You actually had to do it. You had to have the skill. You had to know. And you saw the results if you messed something up, which doesn't happen often. It's very unforgiving. And you weren't allowed to slide in construction. No, you're only as good as your last day.

So every day, you're measured every day of your existence. Whether you're a boss or labor or whatever, every day you have to produce. So it's not just showing up and filling a position. And it does get ingrained in you. I don't have time for BS. Say what you mean, mean what you say.

Real people, sometimes, we don't have time for BS. Life is tough. We just do our best all the time. I still exist that way. I like things that are real. I believe my own eyes. I've lived long enough to see right and wrong. I'm tired of the bullshit. My mom was a dominant person. My mom was involved in the community. Highly involved. Universally liked my mother. Still is. She still lives in the community. There, my father died a few years back.

I'm one of seven. Four girls and three boys. I had two older sisters, two younger sisters, and I was the youngest boy of three. We're still all relatively close. I did lose my middle brother about 10 years ago. That was tough, but that was another lesson in life. He lived hard. He used drugs and was a bit of an outlaw. He was a hardworking guy. But you could see the things that he was doing were destructive for him and people around him.

He died of complications from HIV because he was an IV drug user. That was the life he chose to live. I love my brother. What a great guy. Me and John worked together a lot. We spent a lot of time staying together on the road. I miss him terribly. Something was broken in him. I wish I can't speak to it, but it happened when he was younger. Something was broken.

some kind of sadness. He would say, "I'll never stop." He'd just say, "I'll never stop." "Don't want to hear about it." He was determined. We all tried to rescue my brother forever. And very tough. We couldn't do it ultimately. We lost him. We worked. You do what you have to do to survive.

My grandfather worked on the Shasta Dam and the surrounding bridges and stuff. So it's a long history going back to Scotland, where my people come from. A long line of productive people. Red Bluff was actually a really thriving town. Redding, all the towns in between here. In fact, this end of the state was processing wood, wood products. Logging. The logs came down to the middle of the valley and they were processed here.

High school was watching my community deteriorate, the mills all going out of business, and very tough economic times here. It was hopeless. I was a kid that didn't get really good grades in school. I knew I was destined to just be a worker. And in fact, even the teachers, they didn't encourage some of us, "Your grades aren't good enough to go to college. Oh, college is going to be, you know, $50,000 a year." Back then, it was a lot of money. It was like, "Well, there's no way I can go to college."

Looking back now, it was doable. Could have went to community college, but no, no, they hammered into you that it's hopeless if you were just an average student. So there was a sense of hopelessness. And for me, I took the Army as a way to get out.

It was only in a year I got out early. Things happened, whatever. I ended up being a combat engineer equipment operator, which was fine, but the Army was a big letdown too. I'd kind of always had this lifelong dream of being in service, but we were so poorly trained, junk equipment, everything, even our uniforms were garbage.

Our weapons were garbage, our trucks. We couldn't even go across post. This shit would be falling apart. It's an illusion, and it took me going in there. You know, you have this idea. You know, I wanted to serve America. I love this country. But it was a big letdown to me. I went into construction, went into the family business. I became a bridge builder. It wasn't my first choice. Start at the bottom because I wouldn't have it any other way. I want to earn everything. So I started at the bottom and worked my way up.

I took some time away from construction and I was ranching. I did hay sales, you know, I'd load trucks and whatever. And then we did commercial firewood on the same place. It was balls to the wall, seven days a week work. That was the least amount of money I ever made in my life, but it was a great life. And you're surrounded by good people, you know, you're surrounded by productive people.

A friend of the guy I worked for needed some help out at their place. And I was asked to go over and help him move some furniture off a truck. And that's where I met Michelle. So I ended up going out there and doing some ranching. And we got to be good friends. Her and her husband, she was still married to her previous husband. And I was even friends with her husband. But down the road, they split up. And me and her were still friends.

We liked each other. Really, our relationship was a friendship, most of all, you know, and it really should start that way. It took time to build for us. I'd been wounded by a previous relationship and it took me a while to open my heart up. She was very patient with that. It took a while for me to open up completely, but it was awesome. I can tell you, and I tell everyone with her for 13 years, it was awesome.

It was truly, and I'm not blowing it up, it was awesome. The level of communication and patience. We were free to be ourselves, too.

She kind of had a hard knocks upbringing, you know, broken homes and stuff like that. But raising two kids and working and then put herself through college, got her degree, multiple degrees. I have the utmost respect for her. Little thing, four foot eight, little gal, but I never saw her that way. To me, she was 10 foot tall.

She was a very intelligent woman, but I'd always respected her background, that she had made herself in spite of all the adversity and all the hard stuff, you know, and still was a person, still had a life. I respected her very much. And I saw that she didn't receive a lot of respect, you know, from her previous husbands.

She's working as a teacher and she loved teaching. She loved working with the troubled kids, most of all, the tough nuts to crack. And she could do it because she was so damn bright. What was great was that she was such a real person. We'd had children with previous marriages, and so we didn't have children together. She was still working as a teacher. Eventually, she took a job with CPS there in Redding.

We'd lived together by that time for three years already. And then we bought a place out here and moved out here. She loved it. She loved being out in the country. She liked the serenity, the privacy. We were kind of out on the edge.

I was never home. I was on the road working construction. I was only home on weekends or between jobs. But it was more about her. It made her happy to be out here where we could have space and have our animals and have a garden, you know. Right now we're looking at snow-capped mountains all the way around. Beautiful Mount Shasta and Mount Lassen and everything in between. It's lovely.

We can see the stars. We used to get up on a roof and set up the telescopes without a lot of ambient light to interfere. No, we enjoyed the whole experience of being out in the country. It was awesome. But you do kind of have to be tough to live here. You know, it's tough. But life is tough. Life is a challenge, right?

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I'd had a shoulder injury. I'd had surgery, so I was off work. And I was just about to the point where I was a couple more weeks and then I was going to hit the road again, go to work. So at that tail end, I was going to a doctor's appointment in Redding. She was going along with me. We were on our way to her doctor's appointment.

We're driving down the road and we see this guy in our lane. I was driving and I said something to Michelle. Somebody's drunk awful early, you know. So I swerve into the other lane, you know. We're closing. He swerves into that lane as well and he's holding his track, you know. And I thought, what the hell, you know. We're closing the whole time and I, at the last second, I turn to get out of his way and...

PT bones right behind my door. And our car went flying. Our car spun. And, well, we ended up on the side street there from the main road. You know, I checked on her. Honey, are you all right? And she kind of gave me the, oh, she was hurt. I was still in one piece, you know. But I said, well, let's get out of here. I couldn't open my door. So we had to crawl out her side. She crawls out and falls down immediately. She was hurt.

I crawl down and just as I put one foot out the door, the gunfire began. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And Michelle's on the ground. And she looks up to me as someone's shooting. I don't know, because we're disoriented. We just had a bad car accident. I get out and I look over the roof of the car in the direction where I knew the creep and the pickup was. And he's firing a gun. He had laser sights. He's firing. And I told Michelle, run.

She got up and she went a little whiz and fell down and then got back up and ran. I'm thinking she's out of the way. I went around back to the main road. Sure enough, he follows me. I'm a big target. So I'm running away. I'm widening this gap. Michelle's running up this other street and I'm running down this way. He's following me. Good. That's what I want. Firing the whole time. Round after round. Not machine gun. It was fire.

They're bouncing off the ground. I'm running uphill. I need to get cover somewhere, but there was nowhere to get cover. About that time, some people pull up and I go up to the car and let me in and tried to open the car door.

on this SUV and the people locked it. They weren't letting me in and then they back up, my hands still on the handle of their car and they pull me to the ground. Bullets are flying. They're scared too. So I'm left there. I pick myself up. The bullets are still flying. I clamber up and I don't know, I get another 10 feet and that's when the first bullet hit me and I hit the ground.

The first bullet stung. It was a clean room through this leg. And I got back up. I may have got another 10 feet. And that's when the bullet hit my right leg. Blew my leg in half. Shattered the bone and it took a chunk out of me as big as my heart. And I hit the deck. I can't go. Michelle had heard me scream out or something. She came back to check on me.

This guy's just marching very methodically, determined to come kill me. He was probably, I don't know, 100 feet from me. And for some reason, she had passed him up running towards me. And as soon as she passed him up, he just pointed over there and put three rounds in her. She fell in a ditch beside the road. And I'm shot up. I'm in the middle of the road watching it happen. I'm begging the guy, you know, please don't. Please don't.

He's determined. He continues walking towards me. I'm laying in my own blood, as big as this table. And he's not saying anything. Just stone cold. After she had a shot, I was talking to her. You know, that was the love of my life. "Honey, hang on, you know, hang on." So he gets about half the distance to me, from her to me. And Michelle raises up because she was laying face down and she raised up and hollered at him and got his attention.

because he walked back over and put three more rounds in her. And at that point I was done. After that, I laid back and I laid on my back and I'm staring up at the sky and I said out loud, I said, "I'm dead. I'm dead." I said it three times, "I'm dead." And just laid still. And he believed me. So after a few moments, I rolled over on my side and I could see down the road and the creep is walking away.

And he walks down, I'm watching him, I'm laying on my side. Some guy had pulled up in another vehicle, little silver Honda. Left the door open and the guy took off running. But I don't know if these people are working as a team or whatever. So the guy walks and gets in that little Honda, just like it was waiting for him. So I'm watching this and I sit up, I sit up on my ass in the middle of the road. And he must have saw me sitting up. He puts that thing in reverse.

And he's backing up. He's going to run me over. He wasn't done with me yet. So I dragged myself over as close as I could get to Michelle alongside the road. Man, it took all I could do. My legs flopping around. And I got into the ditch. Once I got into the ditch, he stopped and then he took off. But I got about the distance, the length of the stable from Michelle. And I'm talking to her.

"You know, hang on, hang on, honey." But then I started hollering. I knew I wasn't far from that transfer station over there. So I started hollering for help, help as loud as I could. And the garbage guy come over and assisted. And as soon as he got there, I told him that she checked my wife. And he did. He went over and checked her. He said, "No, she's gone." I said, "Check her again." He went and checked her again.

You know, I saw her move. I saw her move, you know, and bless his heart, he went and chucked her. Then he came and he started assisting me and holding pressure on what was left of my leg there. I didn't want to believe she was dead. You don't want to think about it. I held out hope for a long time. So this nice fellow come to help me. A lot of time goes by. People are driving by.

They were driving right through. And I'm sitting there on the ground. And he had the garbage truck parked, taking up one lane while this flash was going and stuff. People were driving right by me and my neighbors. Good people want to see the dead woman and the guy shot on the road. Many cars went through the scene. And they were asking questions and stuff.

You know, get help. Go get an ambulance. And I'm thinking, where's the cops? Where's the help? Because I can see the choppers and planes and shit at that time. There's tons of choppers flying around and I can hear the ambulances and stuff. Well, why aren't they coming here? Time goes by. Still waiting, waiting. People are driving through. I'd finally looky-loose. I'd tell them, get the fuck out of here. Just get the fuck out of here.

This fella that was helping me, you know, I said, you probably haven't seen anything like this before. And he points up to his ball cap. There's a screaming eagle on his ball cap. I said, oh, so you've seen this? And he's, yeah, I've seen this before. He was a medic in the army in Afghanistan. He'd been through it. He kept his cool. The pain is so intense that you just kind of have to block it mentally.

A considerable amount of time went by waiting for someone to arrive. And while we're waiting, I'm asking this guy, I said, man, I wonder what's taking him so long. You know, he's telling me all the other people have been shot out here. The school got shot up. Finally, these cars start creeping up the road and there's guys walking between the cars with their SWAT gear on. And they see us alongside the road.

Show us your hands. They run over and stick AR-15s in our face. Show us your hands. You know, I'm blowing up. There's people fucking shot here. There's people shot here. So this posse comes through in their unmarked vehicles and they're all just swat gear. And they finally, oh, what happened? I'm alert. I tell them everything to detail. This is what happened. This is, he went that way in a silver Honda.

So they gather up and leave. They didn't leave anyone there. They just took a statement, got my name, radioed in, whatever, and they were gone. It's almost another 40 minutes before someone else shows up. So this big fat cop shows up in another unmarked car, and he parks across the street. He's in no particular hurry. This guy gets out, goes around the back of his car and gets some gear. He's boo-boo-boo, puts his gloves on, taking his time. I've been bleeding for an hour by then.

I said, anytime, sweetheart. When he finally gets close enough, I said, check my wife. Please check my wife. I begged him to check my wife, and he did. I made him check her again when he was done. He'll check her again. I don't want to give up. But she was gone. Yeah, I realized that. It sucks.

So this guy, this big old lumbering piece of shit, all take over and he gets down in the ditch and he's gonna take over from this medic, guy who did a great job. He fums around there and they put a tourniquet on. He's overwhelmed. Within a few minutes, he asked the garbage man, "Can you come hold this again?" Before he got the tourniquet, he was already exhausted.

After a while, and I'm even asking the cop, why don't you send an ambulance down here to get us, you know? Oh, there's other people that have been shot. Okay, yeah, well, we're shot. I've been here a while. He stands up and he's thinking about it. Well, we're going to put you in that truck, not in his vehicle. Not going to put a bloody victim in his SUV. So we're going to carry you over to the garbage truck.

And I said, no, you're not. You're going to back that truck up here. If I got to ride in the garbage truck, you're not going to carry me. My legs are bad. So they did that. Backs it up there. And then they shoved me in that garbage truck so hard that my pants come down. And I'm laying on garbage and shit. Shit up my back. Up against garbage cans in the back of a garbage truck. And they shut the tailgate. You know, my legs...

So I got the ride down to the heliport in the garbage truck. And we get down to the heliport and I'm laying in the back and I hear, "Stop! Show us your hands! Stop where you are!" A couple more heroes down there with the M16s, they come around to the back of the garbage truck and it's people shot, I'm hollering because I can't see out of it. "It's people shot!" They come around, "Oh God!" I said, "Yeah."

So then they fumble around. What do we do with them? Well, there's an ambulance sitting there. There's a chopper sitting here. He says, put me in the chopper. I need to go just do something. They're all having a group fuck over here trying to decide. Well, let's change the tourniquet. We're going to put a different tourniquet on. What's wrong with the tourniquet? Well, this is a better one. Get my ass to the hospital.

They decide to put me in an ambulance. It's a bad situation. Those guys are overwhelmed immediately. Ambulance goes down to the end of the runway. We got to where the store is here. He needs to go on a chopper. So they turn around and take me back to the chopper, put me in a different gurney, one for the chopper. I'm hurting, but it's been a couple hours. The chopper ride to Mercy up in Redding. The chopper crew was cool. And the nurses on board were very sweet.

We're not prepared for any of this crap. They did their best, you know. It was tough. That was a tough day. Very tough. They did initial surgery and then the next day they had to do another surgery. But they had to order the longest titanium strap they could to put my bone back together. It's amazing that I still have a leg. Dealing with the wounds clinic and all that, terribly expensive. I was going to like five appointments a week. Different doctors. Oh man.

That all got exhausted. Apparently my insurance got to a point they wouldn't allow skin graft. And then when they finally allowed a skin graft, the leg got infected. It was a touch and go for a couple of years. The leg would get infected. I'd have to go in the hospital for a couple of days a week. They did send out in-home health nurses once a week. They didn't want to be out there because it's a dangerous area.

So I just said, "Well, don't send any more people. I don't need anyone else to come out. I'll make our way into the doctor's office." And it was a combination of... I had family members initially help me out, give me rides. But right away, I made myself able to drive.

It was tough. You know, I'm determined. I'm not going to be, not going to keep me down long. I'm going to do all I can to get better. But I still have an open wound five years later. I still have to put dressing on every day. You really learn that you're all alone. Yeah, people have sympathy, but you're on your own. You've got to do it all. I learned that right away. I don't have people. I had to pay people to come and help me. I spent a fortune on it.

Fortunately, it made plans. It had life insurance and stuff and had good insurance otherwise. We provided for that. That was always the idea because I'm a construction guy that I was going to get killed on a job or something. So everything was set up to take care of my wife if I ever eventually got hurt or whatever. So it ended up being that I'm the one.

My best friend was my wife, and she wasn't there. She got taken from me. And she was such a tough gal, and there was never any self-pity from her. I mean, she wouldn't allow me to have self-pity if things were going rough, whatever. She'd worked through so many tough things. With her, it made me better. And it made me better prepared for this crap, because you end up doing it alone. The feeling of helplessness was a feeling of helplessness more that I couldn't help her.

I was her hero. I was the strong guy that was supposed to take care of her, you know, and take care of others. I'm that guy, and I was blown apart. It was the hardest thing in the world for me to sit there and not be able to protect her, to jump up and go, strangle this dude. A lot of blaming myself for even being out here.

Had I took the other road, we had different routes that we'd take. My wife liked taking the high road, and I liked taking the low road. And me taking the low road was a mistake that day. So I beat myself up about that. A lot of crying. A lot of crying. Missing my wife. Thinking about her, you know, and the loss. No, you never get over it. It gets easier to deal with, but I can never get over it.

I'm still in pain. I'm in constant pain. You have to come in terms of this person, my wife, is never coming back. So already dealt with that. So, okay, what about me? I had this very unique person, the love of my life, this wonderful person that is irreplaceable. So a good part of it is how do I put myself in this world? Where's my place now? Because it's changed for me. I can't work.

While I was healing the first couple of years, I'm thinking, "I may go back to work. I'll be able to go back to work." And after a while, it becomes clear, "No, you can't, you know." Life is terribly unfair. You can do everything right and still lose. That's a tough lesson. There is no guarantees. Not in this country or any country. You have the right to pursue happiness. There's no guarantee of happiness. So life's unfair? Boo hoo. It is unfair. I accepted that a long time ago.

What's unfair is not having police protection. I've since learned that the cops, they really don't have the authority to do a bunch. They wait around until somebody's rights are violated and then they can step in and do stuff. But they're kind of a visual deterrence more than that. They're security guards. They don't have quite the power that people think they do.

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I'm working out in the yard during the weekend, and I heard automatic gunfire, which, okay. You hear gunfire all the time out here. There's a gun range not far from where I live. And I'm outside working. Michelle's in the house. I went in and told Michelle, I'm going to call the sheriff's department. Tell them, yeah, they ought to come take a look at this because it's not going away. It's going on for hours. So I called the sheriff's department.

And I got my ass chewed out by a cop on the other end. Well, you know not all animatics are illegal. And I said, yeah, I'm aware of that. But it pissed me off. I got my ass chewed for calling. They did not send anyone out to investigate. This was, yeah, just a couple weeks before the shooting. And I was so pissed off. I'll never call in vassals again for anything. But it was in the wake of this, the shooting in Las Vegas was fresh in our mind.

It was horrible. Still unexplained. The guy flipped. You know, a working class guy. I'm not anti-gun. We're just working class folks. I'm not just going to sit by and not do anything about this. I was concerned. We were let down out here. We didn't have cops to keep me out of this crap going on out here. Ever. Not even since. There's cartel guys here. You're not in L.A., but they're here.

They take our tax money and they don't represent us. And another part of it is the people themselves. Our society has let us down because people allow this bullshit lawlessness to continue out here. Jimmy or Bobby or whatever, here's an outlaw. So no one says anything. Bullshit. Let's live like human beings, decent human beings. Not be stealing and hurting other people.

The guy shouldn't have been out on the street. He was a creep. Tried to kill two other people. And he's walking the street. Totally preventable. No excuse. It was totally preventable. What happened out here? So yeah, I'm mad about it. I'm bitter about it. Do I understand we're all humans? Oh, yeah. You know, I was human too. My wife was certainly human. So what to do under those circumstances? You do your best. That's all you can do. Be strong.

I grew up in a time when a neighbor was fucking up. The rest of us, you could go talk to them. Hey, you need to knock this shit off. You know, there was some accountability. Nowadays, people just don't say anything. They let it slide. Let it slide. Be more active with your surroundings. Take part in it yourself. You know, be a better citizen. My kids are all grown, but we still talk. We still communicate. Communication is important. And I'm not talking texting shit. People need to do it in person.

I've got to know people more intimately where I didn't have the time before. I was on the road all the time. I'd go out drinking. I'd go to the local pubs. I was never able to do that before. I was Mr. Responsible, working all the time and taking care of, you know, being with my wife. That was all I needed.

And sure, I'm meeting new people and stuff, and I was open to that. But now I really have the time to get to be around folks and have relationships with people. I've become more social. I've made new friends. I learned that the community wants to heal and get on and not think about it. Well, I'm great that the community wants to heal. Good for them. I appreciate their own experience, but...

Community healing so that we could put it behind us. Well, it doesn't end for me. It ended for my wife. This town, we talk to each other more. We do. People are genuinely friendlier. We're more open. We're more interested in keeping our community safer. So something did come out of it. I love California. I'm from here. I've been other places, but this is home. I'm going to stay and make it better. I've got blood in this place. I'm not just going to give it up.

Most people want to just have peace, right? We want to go enjoy whatever the hell it is we want to do without being encumbered by someone else. I like for people to understand what's right and wrong and practice it. It took a while, but then I found a therapist and I still see her. I still have this PTSD thing. You know, you hear the word and you don't quite know what it is until you experience it. You're helpless to it.

So I have much more sympathy for that. Because it would freak me out. I can remember, I was sitting at a stoplight in town, and a cop had someone pulled over and just seeing the gun in his holster freaked me out. And I grew up around guns. I believe people should have the right, but it freaked me out for a while. I don't want anything to do with any guns, personally. There is a level of anxiety. Most of the time I can handle it, but occasionally it slips in and

I feel uncomfortable. I have flashbacks. So I continue with therapy and it's great. I honestly didn't want to know details. I didn't even want to know the guy's name or anything about him for a long, long time. I still don't. Maybe that's part of my coping mechanism. Sad I don't know. I've met other victims of this guy and whatever and I appreciate it. They're great people. But we've got to go on with our lives.

I've been through some crap before this. I kinda liked a fella to help me. He'd seen so much shit, he kept his cool. I think he fell apart afterwards. Sadly. This whole experience, I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I mean that. I can't even think of anyone I hate that much. Don't spend time hating people. When you're a kid, you do, and it takes too much energy. It's okay to be hurt. It's okay to be broken. It's not a damn crime to be... depressed.

I'm not afraid of feelings. I'm a tough dude, but man, I cry too. It's okay to have a range of emotions. I'm not old John Wayne bullshit. Never cry about bullshit. I have real feelings that things really hurt. These things really hurt. Losing my brother hurt. I couldn't speak at his funeral. I love my brother. My life will never be the same. The dreams I had, it's changed. All of it. So I'm living a different life now.

I don't necessarily believe in the death is absolute. I like to believe in there's a spirit. Not a religious guide, but I think there's more to us than there's flesh and blood. After this experience, I hope that there's more. Do I feel her around? Yeah, I speak to her still. It's one-sided, but you keep your mind in a certain way. I know she's in a place where she can see far more than I can. I'm thankful that she's there.

her spirit's able to go around and keep an eye on the grandkids and explore the cosmos. I hope that that's what she's doing. What we bring to life is something that wants to continue growing. You have an impact on people and years later you can see what's become of it.

I don't have to be hung up on this. This doesn't have to be my whole life. You know, some people, it's their whole life is that one moment. Or, you know, for a lot of guys, that one tour overseas, and they hang their whole life on that one experience. Who I was as a person, who I am currently, I hang my hat on that. Go out every day, be an honorable person, be productive, be no trouble to anyone.

I'm not going to crawl under a rock and feel sorry for myself. No, no, no, no. Death happens. It's part of life. It just goes on and on and on and on. The wonderment, the things to learn never ends. So I'm going to go on being productive and strong for everyone.

Today's episode featured Troy McFadden. This episode is part one of our limited series, Point Blank, co-produced by me, Witt Misseldein, in collaboration with Connor Sheets, investigative journalist with the Los Angeles Times, with special thanks to Jason Blaylock, Andrew Waits, and Gabby Quintana.

To find out more about the shooting, you can read the original article by Connor that inspired this series, titled, It Was California's Forgotten Mass Shooting, But For Victims, The Hell Never Ends, on latimes.com. From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Witt Misseldein.

Today's episode was co-produced by me and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram at ActuallyHappening.

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Welcome to the offensive line. You guys, on this podcast, we're going to make some picks, talk some s**t, and hopefully make you some money in the process. I'm your host, Annie Agarne.

So here's how this show is going to work, okay? We're going to run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories like No offense. No offense, Travis Kelsey, but you got to step up your game if Pat Mahomes is saying the Chiefs need to have more fun this year. We're also handing out a series of awards and making picks for the top storylines surrounding the world of football. Awards like the He May Have a Point Award for the wide receiver that's most justifiably bitter.

Is it Brandon Ayuk, Tee Higgins, or Devontae Adams? Plus, on Thursdays, we're doing an exclusive bonus episode on Wondery Plus, where I share my fantasy football picks ahead of Thursday night football and the weekend's matchups. Your fantasy league is as good as locked in. Follow the offensive line on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can access bonus episodes and listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.