289: What if you walked into your high school with a shotgun?
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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. Hi listeners. Today we launch season 13 of This Is Actually Happening. I'm so thrilled to return from summer break refreshed and with a slate of unbelievable new stories for you all this season. A few announcements before we start. This year we're expanding the design and artwork related to the show.

all of which will be added to the store every month with new items. So if you want shirts, postcards, stickers, posters, and other items, or if you just want to check out some of the new designs, go to thisisactuallyhappening.com. As always, stay updated by following us on Instagram, at Actually Happening, or by joining the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook.

We've also decided to start posting on threads this year after leaving the graveyard of Twitter, so you can follow us on threads as well @ActuallyHappening. Thank you all again for your continued support throughout the break this summer. And now we bring you the unthinkable story of John Romano for the first episode of season 13: "What if you walked into your high school with a shotgun?" Instead of fixing my own pain, instead of fixing my suffering,

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 289: What if you walked into your high school with a shotgun?

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. My earliest memories don't include my father. My parents were divorced by the time I was four years old.

We had gone on a family vacation where my dad decided to stay back and when we returned he picked us up from the airport, drove us home, and informed my mom that he had already moved out. My parents both had kids in previous relationships. My mom had my older brother and my older sister. My dad had my older brother Matt and he didn't want visitation with me in the beginning.

He just wanted to move on with his life, living with my brother Matt. Thankfully, my mother and my mother's side of the family were very warm, welcoming, and kept that tight-knit sense of family present for me.

My mother did an amazing job. She had a good job working Monday through Friday and she was there for the three of us in a way that I cannot understand. Her strength, her power, her determination to raise us the way she did. Growing up my mother was definitely my world. I remember her smile always trying to get me to open up because she wanted to make sure that I was okay.

When I first started going to my father's house every other weekend, my brother Matt would be there as well. There would be times where my dad would go out and he would leave the two of us alone and my brother would invite me into the bedroom. And that is when he would touch me and tell me what to do to him. It happened over a couple year period when I was such a young child.

I can't imagine what it was going through my mind besides what he had told me that this is what people who love each other do. I believed that he loved me. The sexual abuse was a secret. It was something I didn't share with anybody. Nobody had any idea. They just believed that I was going to my father's house with my brother and having a fun time. When it stopped, I was probably only seven years old.

I imagined that I had done something wrong because I believed it was something that people who love each other did. He became more distant and I thought that he doesn't want to be around me anymore. There was little to no relationship at all afterwards. There was no even brotherly relationship.

It was yet again another sense of feeling abandoned, first by my father, now realizing that my half-brother on my father's side no longer wanted to have a relationship with me. For a short while, I blamed myself, and I remember feeling emptiness in a way at such a young age.

It wasn't until I was 12, 13 years old when I started to become more sexually aware that I started to look back, remembering and realizing what had been done to me. Sadly, I felt guilty. I felt that I was somehow dirty because of what happened.

But thankfully, throughout all the abuse, throughout the rejection I felt from my father and my brother, being home at my mother's house with my other brother and my sister, I still felt welcomed. I still felt a part of a family.

I wish I had been able to open up about the abuse at some point, but I didn't recognize it as being wrong at the time and when I was in my early teens, I felt too awkward, too afraid. When I was in middle school, I slowly began to go into a depression where I lost the desire to do these things.

I didn't even want to be with my friends sometimes. I would still manage to go out playing little league, playing soccer. I was hanging out with friends on the street. I would still date, have fun, go to dances. But there was a part of me in middle school slipping away. And even my grades went from A's and B's to in eighth grade I was in danger of failing.

In the beginning of my depression, I thought that everybody felt that sense of emptiness and lack of joy. I had family members who recognized that something was going on and they were very attentive asking me how I was doing. Yet they also thought that this was just normal teenage angst in the beginning. They knew something was wrong, they just didn't know how wrong it was.

I was just deteriorating slowly at first and then it would be more rapid when I went into high school. I was suddenly not the person I was. Things became worse and by the age of 14 I was thinking about ending my own life.

And it wasn't that I didn't have good things. I knew I had good things going on in my life. I knew despite the early childhood abuse that I had a family who cared for me. I knew that I was in a middle-class family and I knew that there were people in the world who suffered so much more than I did. Yeah, I just didn't feel anything.

I felt an emptiness, a blankness, and I struggled just to get out of bed. I just wanted to give up. My sophomore year of high school, when my depression was running its peak, I called my mom from the cafeteria and I had to run to the boys bathroom because I was in tears telling her there's something wrong with me. I can't do this anymore.

And she came and she picked me up and she brought me to the doctors and she made sure that we would look into this because she herself was not sure how to deal with me telling her I just didn't enjoy life anymore. And I asked to go to therapy, yet when I went to therapy, I didn't open up the way that I should have.

I didn't talk about the sexual abuse. I didn't talk in depth about the suicidal thoughts that I had. They asked me if I was willing to go into Four Winds Mental Hospital. And I voluntarily said yes. Because I believed that I was just going for a few days to get a little bit of in-depth therapy. Yet when I arrived, they told me that they would be keeping me as long as they wanted.

I felt deceived, I felt played, and I wanted nothing more than to fight back, to resist, and to get out of there. I only spent a week in that hospital because I faked my way out. I told them everything they wanted to hear because I couldn't wait to get back to being in a "normal" environment. Even if I was feeling empty, even if I was feeling suicidal,

I hated that feeling of being isolated and kept away from everybody. The first medication I'd been put on was an antidepressant. And then when I went into 4 Winds, they gave me Zyprexa. And then I had problems with anxiety from the side effects. So they put me on Xanax, which then caused me problems with sleeping. So I was put on Ambien.

And it seemed like each medication had a side effect that they would give me another medication for. And before I knew it, I was on a cocktail of psych meds that had multiple side effects, a lot of which I didn't know. There were the night terrors. There were the times where I'd be sleeping and I believed I was in hell. I had such intense dreams. I was terrified to go to sleep.

And I didn't even know that it was just a side effect. Zyprexa, when I was on it for nine months, I gained almost 50 pounds, which then became a problem for me too, as I believed I had started having an eating disorder, yet I learned that the side effect of Zyprexa is the extreme weight gain. I was never a pretty boy. I was never somebody who was obsessively looking in the mirror.

but this made me feel even more awkward than I was already feeling. Gaining all that weight made me feel less than who I already felt was nothing. When I first started going to therapy, I asked for help in school. They had a mid-level of special education where people with learning disabilities would be able to get extra help.

They listed clinical depression as a learning disability that made this program available.

But I was the first one in my school to request extra help due to depression, and they denied me. My mother had to get an attorney and fight for this. And by the time that my attorney was able to push for it to get me this extra help, I was already failing most of my classes to the point where I could never make it up.

In my sophomore year, I attempted homeschooling, but homeschooling just felt isolating. I started to become more dissatisfied with the administration because I wanted to blame them, but I shouldn't have. I should have taken accountability. I should have known that it was my fault, but I felt other people had failed me and that upset me, that angered me.

I felt something was wrong with me, which there was, and I felt like I was rejected, which I was by some, but there were so many other people who loved me, who cared for me, yet I still wanted to blame others. I still didn't want to take on that personal accountability and realizing that others hadn't failed me as much as I had failed myself.

When I was 15, 16 and I was dating more and more, I was becoming sexually active, yet I was still holding in this dirty secret. If people knew what I had done at 5, 6, 7 years old, they would just further look at me as somebody who is different. And maybe they too would pull away from me. I felt that even my therapist would look at me with disdain and disgust.

Holding in that secret of the sexual abuse just festered within me. I was 15 going into my third year of high school where I was repeating most of my sophomore classes that I had failed. My depression seemed to be doing better. Although I wasn't fully opening up in therapy, I was presenting to everybody as doing well.

I was afraid to admit to people though the times where I was sliding back into dark moments, where I was struggling with the idea of hurting myself. I didn't want to admit to that because people were happy that I was doing a little bit better from what they could see. But things in that school year quickly started to fall apart and my going to high school day after day was toxic.

In January of 2004, when I was 16, my brother was coming home from Iraq and he wanted to spend more time with me. And one of the things he wanted to do was for us to go hunting. But this became a problem. My mom was very concerned. Obviously, even though I've been doing better on the outside, she was still worried about me being around firearms. She was concerned that I would hurt myself.

But at this moment, I didn't see myself as a danger to myself or others. So I went into my therapy and I told that to them. I said, I believe I'm doing better, even though I knew I wasn't. But I wanted to feel like I was like everybody else. So I lied and I told my therapist, I want to be able to go hunting.

And my therapist was also a hunter. And because I had never truly opened up to him as much as I should have been, he believed I was doing better. And at the end of the therapy session, my therapist had my mom come in for a few minutes. And he told her, "You have your son back. You have your son back. You can trust him." And those were the magic words.

The beginning of February 2004, there was a local gun shop that was going out of business and my mom said, "Hey, why don't we go check it out?" And so we went through the process where she even spoke with local police and asked them, "Is there anything I should know about having a firearm with a 16-year-old in the household?"

And they say, "Yeah, of course, as long as he's supervised, there's no problem with him going out with people. There's no problem with it being in the household. Keep the gun locked up." Which she did. My mom bought the shotgun. I was just excited to be able to go hunting and to be like everybody else, being trusted. Yet, when I started to tell other family members and my friends

We just got the shotgun. They were concerned. They were afraid that I was going to hurt myself and my depression kicked in. My mind distorted their love, their concern for me into a mistrust. I distorted it in my mind to believe they don't trust me. They don't see me as everybody else. Nobody will ever trust me again. And I began to downward spiral.

At 16 years old, I believed that my life would never have meaning and purpose, and I began to think about ending my own life. I didn't want to end my life at home because I didn't want my mother to find me. And I began to think about going into my school and killing myself in front of other people or having the police show up and having them kill me.

Because there was also the fear that I just can't pull the trigger myself. I wouldn't be able to do it. So I said, you know, I'm going to go and I'm going to make sure that everybody sees me. That I won't be ignored for once. I wanted that all eyes on me. I wanted people to realize that I was full of pain and suffering and I wanted them to feel it too. I wanted them to hurt.

I wanted them to blame themselves. I wanted them to know that my death was on their hands. Instead of me taking accountability, instead of me knowing all that I could have done differently in my life, instead of me opening up, instead of fixing my own pain, instead of fixing my suffering, I believed that I couldn't. So I wanted to spread pain and suffering to others.

I wanted to make sure that they would see something that they would never unsee. That they wouldn't be able to forget about me. I wanted to be dead, but I still wanted to live on in a way. My mind believed if I had done something so public like this, that a part of me would somehow live on. That I wouldn't just disappear into nothingness. I would be ending my pain, I would be ending my suffering, but there would still be a part of me

that's in the world, even if it was other people suffering. It wasn't that I didn't care about other people. I knew that they would be suffering. I knew that, but I also justified it in my mind as I'm not like other school shooters. I'm not there to kill. I'm just there to be remembered

So the plan to go into my school was going on in my mind. Sunday evening, I began to write out a suicide note.

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Monday morning, February 9th, 2004. I started the day surprisingly normal. I woke up, I showered, I ate a bowl of Cheerios, then I went and finished the suicide note, grabbed the shotgun, she did keep it locked up but I knew where the key was, I loaded it up with birdshot, and I packed up my backpack and drove myself into school late that day.

When I walked into the school, there was nobody at the front door. There was nobody in that first section of hallway on the first floor. But I went up to the second floor where all the classrooms were in that area. I'm walking up the stairway and I'm hearing all of the voices of teachers and students and I start to panic and I go right for the bathroom.

and I go into the stall. I set everything down and I sit there wanting nothing more than to go home. I was sitting there for a half hour. I felt I was at the point of no return and so I sent a text message to a few of my friends and said "Get out. I'm in school with a gun." I didn't want them to see me like that. I didn't want to unintentionally end up shooting myself in front of one of my friends.

And a few minutes later, I heard the class bell go off as one period was ending, and I heard as the hallways filled up. And I'm sitting in the bathroom stall as now students are coming into the bathroom, not realizing I'm sitting in that stall, shotgun in hand. And I sit there, just waiting for them to leave so I can be alone again, so I can try to figure out what I'm doing. And after a few minutes, people come and go.

And I hear the classroom bell ring again as the next period starts. And I think, "This is it. The hallway's empty. It's time for me to go out there." And so I come out. And I even remember at this time my hands were sweating so badly, I was so nervous, that I went and I washed my hands real quick. And I grabbed the gun. And it's like my mind just started to go on autopilot.

That all the thinking, all the worrying, everything was just gone from my mind. That I was just starting to go. I remember the physical sensations. I remember feeling the gun in my hand. I remember seeing and hearing everybody. But I don't remember the thought process. I was just watching. It's like I had made the decision and my mind went blank. And I just observed.

And it's the scariest feeling in the world that I'm capable of having done that. And I wonder if it was just my mind even protecting itself in a selfish mode of we're about to do something terrible and just all thoughts of it stopped. And as I start to come out of the bathroom, a student starts to come in. He rounds the corner, comes into the beginning part of the bathroom, and he freezes.

because he sees me walking towards him with a shotgun pointed towards him and I remember him saying this can't be real and then he turns around and runs for his life and I just start to walk and I go out into the hallway and now I see two other students they're both down the hallway coming around the other corner so they're a good 40 feet down and one of them he yells out oh there's a teacher whose classroom was right there

she hears him not knowing that I'm there and I remember her calling out to him to watch his mouth and that's when I point the gun up and away from them and I fire and they run back in the direction they came disappearing from around the corner and I fire off a second shot and now everybody knows I'm there everybody there knows something terrible is happening and I just start walking down the hall

It's empty, it's just me, but there's probably five classrooms in that hallway. And I walk by, I don't even touch the doors, but the doors are closed. And then I think it was the third doorway that I pass, the door was still wide open. And so I go and I stand, right in the doorway. And I look in, and everybody is down on the ground, hiding behind their desks, hiding from me.

The teacher, she's at the front, and I see her hiding under the table. And I still remember, she cries out, Oh Lord. And I had wanted at that point for everybody to see my pain, to see my suffering. All I felt was seeing theirs, seeing their pain, seeing their terror. One of the students says,

Even pops her head up from behind her desk because she was somebody who was a friend of a friend. She was one of the people I was just out with Saturday night. And she had that confusion and that tear in her eyes. And I turn around and I just walk out. And then suddenly I'm grabbed from behind. The vice principal had come from his office. He didn't know what was going on.

But he sees me and he runs up. And suddenly he's grabbing at the barrel in one hand, the stock in the other. And he's squeezing me in between and he's a big guy. And I start trying to shake him off me. I start trying to get control of the gun again. But my finger was on the trigger. And as I'm trying to like shake back and forth, my finger hits the trigger, the gun goes off. And I didn't know at the time that there was a teacher coming up behind us. I didn't know the teacher...

Had been shot in the leg. All I knew was I was trying to get this guy off my back. I was trying to get control of the gun again. And I couldn't. I just let go. And I remember saying, fine, I give up. And he just grabs me by the back of my jacket. And he pulls me into an office where a teacher was. The teacher, I remember that teacher was in the office by himself and he was crying.

And the vice principal had to assure him, "It's okay, I have him. It's done." And he put me on the ground and we waited for the police to come. And sure enough, within a few minutes, the local police were there. And as they were taking me out, the ATF shows up and they're in full body armor and they're going into the school. And now they're just searching because they kept questioning me, "Is there anybody else?"

I kept telling them, "No, it's just me." But now everybody not only had to deal with me, now they had to deal with this school becoming a militarized war zone. I did exactly what I had planned, except for the dying part. I spread so much pain and suffering. I put so many people into therapy. I put that teacher into the hospital. I forever changed his life. I never knew him. I never had a conversation with him before.

I didn't even know I had shot somebody. I remember just feeling blank, feeling empty. I was in another place. I had completely disconnected. I remember at that moment hearing them talk about, is everybody okay? The vice principal said, no, so-and-so has been shot.

It didn't connect with me. I remember being confused later on, thinking, "What are you talking about? I didn't shoot anybody because I didn't know." And even when they said it, I still didn't believe it. I still didn't understand. There was no sense of real accountability or real remorse in the immediate aftermath. I just was.

There was no happiness, there was no pleasure, there was no anything. It wasn't until later on that any type of connection to myself, let alone the world around me, happened again. When I was arrested, they brought me to the police station and they immediately start to question me.

The police were even saying, "Hey, a lot of people are going to question what you did, why you did it, and they're going to have the worst possible thoughts about you. This is your opportunity to explain yourself. This is your time now to work with us to understand this." And I thought, "Yeah, sure."

And at 16 years old, I was able to waive my Miranda rights without talking to an attorney, without talking to my family. I start answering questions. The police left me with only one officer in the room, no recording devices, and he starts to write out a statement on my behalf. After a while of answering his questions,

Suddenly, somebody comes in and says, hey, somebody has called from an attorney's office. He's now being represented. All questions must stop. And this officer goes into cover up mode of, OK, listen, we've been doing all this to help you out. And he makes me believe that he's reading the statement out to me, but he doesn't read to me exactly what's on the paper.

He put in on his own behalf a bunch of things that I never said about my intent that day being to kill certain people. I never said that. He says, hey, we got to get you to sign this. We got to put you back into the holding cell. We just got to get this done and over with. And I sign the confession without ever reading it.

I did not know what the statement that was supposedly written by me had said until the day after when it was published in the newspapers and people were coming to my cell and people were saying, "Hey, yo, they wrote this about you," and they would hand me newspaper articles in my cell.

And at first I remember thinking the newspaper made this up. I didn't say this. The newspaper is trying to change my statement to make it sound more sensationalized, to make more money. They are lying about what I said. I didn't put this in the statement. Not realizing, no, the police had lied. The police had deceived me, manipulated me at 16 years old. And here I was.

I just again start to feel like those same thoughts that I'd felt beforehand of I'm being targeted, I'm being manipulated, or I'm being taken advantage of, I'm being put out as something I'm not. I initially believed that I would only be charged with assault, but I was charged with three counts of attempted murder and 82 counts of reckless endangerment. I was facing 75 years in prison.

And I honestly just stopped caring. I was just kind of like, fuck the world. It's not worth living in. And I didn't even care enough to fight these charges. I didn't want to go to trial. I just believed that it would be a circus for the media. And I just believed, you know what? Why bother? I don't even care enough about my own life to fight. And I didn't want to put everybody through it.

And that meant eventually pleading guilty to three counts of attempted murder and six counts of reckless endangerment. And I was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In the mid-2000s, New York State still treated 16 and 17 year olds as adults. So I was 17 years old by the time I was sentenced and I was sent to a men's maximum security prison.

At first, when I went into a reception center, they placed me on suicide watch and that because of the length of my sentence, they believed I needed to be under surveillance. And I was placed in a cell with no clothing except for, you know, this big heavy-duty suit made out of gym mat material. And that was to prevent me from even trying to use clothing to hang myself.

At first, I was concerned. All I know about prison life is what you see from TV and movies. But I went into the prison system and there was actually a lot of guys who had kind of a paternal instinct with me. People saw this baby-faced kid suddenly walking the yard and thankfully, instead of the predators coming for me, the guys who had like that paternal instinct took me under their wing.

And I was able to get into the flow of prison life, of getting a decent job, doing all the things to help your mental health as far as just like exercising, establishing a routine and going through the motions of getting through your time.

When I was 19 and I was about 3 years into my prison sentence, I remember my mom coming up to visit with my brother and sister. And I remember she was always pushing for me to hold on to hope. And I told her, "Hope? That's a poison. That's a four-letter word that's worse than any other four-letter word."

And she breaks down in tears because she realized, at that moment, I didn't believe in hope. I didn't believe in myself. I didn't believe in the world. I believed everything was just disgusting and that nothing would ever get better. My mom, my family, even members of my community who I'd never met before, people were reaching out to me, sending me letters where they were expressing hope to me when I didn't believe in hope.

They were giving me strength when I didn't have any. They believed that I can do good in the world. And I remember thinking like, "What? Why?" I didn't believe in myself and it confused me. Yet, it was still planting those seeds. Everything that my family was doing, that people from the community was doing, was slowly making me believe again. Believing in hope. Believing in myself.

In 2010, I was able to sign up for this program in the prison. It was a voluntary, in-depth, therapeutic community where I would be spending two to three days a week in group therapy, and I could sign up for self-help classes. And this is very rare in the prison system, but

But I was able to get in there when I was in my early 20s. And that is when I felt I opened up and I was able to discuss all those things that had been going on in me for years. All of the pain, the suffering, the desire to want to cause pain and suffering for others. I was able to admit to it all.

The reason why I was able to open up about being sexually abused as a small child was because I first saw another man open up and admit to his own abuse that he had endured. And this empowered me to open up and talk about it myself because I was also conflicted about sexual abuse for men.

I had seen it as something that's very common in women and in girls, but as a young man I was trying to hold on to this idea of what masculinity is and admitting to being sexually abused somehow felt that it would take away from me being a man.

But now seeing another man, he was this big strong guy and he's talking about how he was sexually abused as a child. That gave me the power and the strength to do everything I could to turn my life around. When I first shared everything and talked openly in front of people talking about the harm that I had caused other people, the emotion was so overwhelming. I broke down crying.

It was such a profound experience. It just opened up so much more within me. I also found that people respected it when I didn't hide anything from them. So many people suffer from mental health issues. So many people suffer from sexual abuse, physical abuse, and never go on to hurt other people.

I never want to blame what happened to me or my mental health issues on what I would later do. It's a piece of the puzzle that I wish I had addressed because if I had talked about these things, maybe I could have stopped myself. Maybe I could have prevented so many people from suffering. In 2011, when I was in my early 20s,

I myself had been trying to give purpose and meaning to the world and the universe and trying to understand it all. And I was also drawn to meditation and yoga. Learning to sit and meditate allowed me to realize that our emotional state, our thought process, everything is temporary.

When I'm going through my depressive moments, that's temporary. That too will pass. It was freeing. In all, I spent just under 17 years in prison and I was kept in maximum security the entire time due to the severity of my crime. I had been locked up since I was 16 and I'm now coming into the world December of 2020 during COVID. I'm 33 years old.

I remember I walked out those gates and I saw my family and I'm able to walk right over, hug them all. And it was wonderful to be in that moment, to feel normal now, to have left prison, to have put my life together again. I felt good. I believed in myself. That first day being home meant the world to me.

But I also know that there were people who were still suffering from what I had done to them. For them, that day was one of fear. So I always keep that in mind. When I was released, I made sure to wear a mask because there had been a COVID outbreak in the prison I was in right before I was released. And thankfully, I did wear a mask because a couple days after I was home, I tested positive.

And I then had to isolate once I was home for a 10-day period. So that was definitely a very strange experience of coming home only to have to isolate from the people that I had cared about and couldn't wait to spend every waking moment with. Coming home from prison I knew would be exciting and freeing, but at the same time I worried about a job.

Yet, somebody from my community that had their own business told my family, "John has a job with us whenever he comes home. Don't worry about it." This first job, just working at a store, was phenomenal because it took away the fear of not being accepted when I came home. And that made all the difference to me. At first, when I was working, I was working right in my hometown.

But most people didn't recognize me because I was no longer a 16 year old kid. I was a 33 year old man. But some people already knew. And surprisingly, I received a lot of people who were happy to see me, to hear that I was doing well. And I was caught off guard yet again by the positivity that some people showed me.

It was that support from all these strangers in the community that I once terrified and hurt. They now believed in me and wanted me to do good. And that felt better than anything I could imagine.

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This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

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and there was a job position that was open and they wanted me to apply for it. I started to run a clothing pantry at a homeless shelter where then I would interact with the guests who were in need of some fresh clothes and I was able to help out so many people. Interacting with them was life-saving.

My main goal was to move beyond working the clothing pantry. I wanted to be a social worker. I also wanted to make sure that I could be a part of the process of helping people get their birth certificate, their social security card if needed, so that they could get a job, so that we could get them placed in housing, so their life could be back on track.

When I fell and needed somebody to help me back up, my family was there. I wanted to be the family that they might not have had. I had been home from prison for a year and a half. I'd been working at the homeless shelter for nine months. My day would just start off with me running the clothing pantry. Around lunchtime, I would often go and help down in the cafe area while people are eating lunch.

And on this day, as I'm sitting at this table with my coworkers, a man comes in. I don't recognize him. He's not really a regular. He goes up to the counter where my other coworker is serving lunch and he just asks, what's for lunch? And my coworker says, oh, it's written on the board. And the guy gets upset by this and he says, well, it's written in the book for you, white devil.

And so me and my two other co-workers who are sitting right there, and they're people of color, by the way, we're all kind of like, hey, you can't be using that type of language. And the guy gets upset and he says, what are you talking about? We're like, you can't be calling anybody the white devil. And I didn't say that. I didn't say that. So the three of us are just trying to let him know, like, it's OK. Just grab your lunch, sit down and, you know, just relax.

He goes and he sits down with his lunch and we go about the usual. When this guy starts being more like animated, talking to himself and then he's talking to somebody else and he's like aggressive, like, whoa, you know, just please, it's going to be all right. Just relax. And he starts to get very animated now, starts calling me the white devil. And he starts being extremely aggressive towards me specifically.

I'm just kind of like, you know what? All right. I go and I have a conversation with my boss and I tell him, I think this guy needs to leave. My boss says, okay, no problem. He's going to call the police because sometimes we have to ask the police to help us remove somebody from the premises.

So I go back downstairs and I say, listen, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to leave. You can come back tomorrow. But right now you're being a little too aggressive. Come back tomorrow in a better mindset and we got you. And he's like, oh, can I finish my lunch? I was like, yeah, listen, just eat your lunch real quick. You're fine. We're just going to have to ask you to leave and come back tomorrow. So he starts to finish up his lunch real quick. But then he asked me, can I go and get my property?

because we have gym lockers in a side room. And I say, yeah, of course you can go and get your property. Grab it and then you can leave. He says, all right. I'm just sitting down with my other two co-workers again. When my boss comes downstairs just to make sure everything seems to be okay, he asks, hey, where's this guy at? I say, he's over in the locker room. He's just grabbing his stuff. And then he said he's going to go. My boss says, all right, cool. But a moment later, my boss cries out, watch out. And I kind of look up

And it doesn't click in my brain what I'm seeing. I look and I see something in his hand. I remember thinking he had a pipe or something like that. But he starts to come at me faster. And he has a sword, a katana. And he starts swinging at me. And I black out. I don't remember getting up and running away. All I remember is I'm running up the stairs towards a side door.

And I remember falling on those stairs, falling up them. And I turn around and he's basically right there. I kicked him in the face as hard as I could. My co-workers came running and they're behind him. They're yelling, they're screaming. But he starts swinging the sword and he's chopping at my legs. And even as my legs are falling apart, I'm holding them up, trying to kick at him. Trying to keep him away from the rest of my body because my legs are literally starting to fall apart.

After a few moments of this, he doesn't leave the building, but he walks away from where I am. And my co-workers come running in, crying and screaming. And at first, I remember saying to one of my co-workers, I'm dying. And she's like, no, you're not. No, you're not. It's okay. It's okay. And then I lose consciousness for only just a few moments. Because then they're right next to me. They're trying to talk to me. They're trying to keep me awake. And I remember now looking up.

And my attacker has come back. And now he has a second sword. And my coworker is standing over me. And she's trying to protect me. But he comes and he starts swinging and she gets out of the way. And this time, he gets beyond my legs. And he's swinging for my head. And I hold up my hands. And now my arms start to fall apart. He basically chops my hands completely off. They were holding on by a little bit of skin. A little bit of bone maybe.

And he's chopping and he's yelling at me. Move your hands! I held up my arms. Because I knew that if I had put my arms down, he would have killed me. And then he finally leaves and he goes out the door. And at this point, I'm lying there. I'm in complete and total shock. I'm awake, but I'm not feeling any pain. And now my co-workers are crying. And I remember telling them, it's going to be okay. Not because...

I believed that I was going to live, but because I was accepting my death, because at this point all I see is blood, and there was just kind of a calm peace that had come over me in accepting my death, I was hit, not only throughout my legs, but my arms. He hit me twice in my back when I was running away.

I was hit on my face right above my right eye. He struck my neck, thankfully just missing my jugular. They had to reattach my hands. They had to sew up my right leg, because the skin had just opened up completely. Completely exposing my kneecap, my femur. Everything was wide open, as the skin almost peeled back. The worst injuries were to my wrists.

My hands weren't 100% cut off, but they were connected only by a little bit of vein and skin. When I was resting after the attack, I had brought my arms up onto my chest, and my arms were going straight up while my hands were going straight back. Almost completely off. With bone, ligaments, everything exposed.

And my co-workers had put a towel on my hands, on my wrists, and wrapped me up and put pressure to try to stop the blood flow, which probably saved my life. A few minutes later, the police show up. They put tourniquets on all four of my limbs. And I remember being rolled out into the street, and everybody is looking at me with horror in their eyes. Just like when I was in school that day.

Everybody was seeing me and they would never forget what they saw. But now, I had been the victim. Now, I was the one who was suffering because of somebody else's actions. It was now, yet again, all eyes on me in the worst possible way. When I go into the ambulance, I remember them putting the mask over my face to give me the oxygen and I don't remember waking up until two days later in the hospital.

The doctors told me when I first woke up that all of my limbs were now attached, but they still weren't sure if I was going to be able to keep my left hand. They weren't sure if I was going to keep my right leg from the knee down. Both of my hands had been almost completely cut off. My ulna bones were broken completely through on both wrists. It severed all the tendons, ligaments, and nerves.

I almost lost my right leg from the knee down. My right foot had been severely injured as well. I was struck a total of 34 times. I required so many stitches, staples, and sutures that nobody ever counted. They were surprised at the fact that they were able to get everything attached the way it was. Even though they were saying I wasn't out of the woods yet, that I might still lose a hand, they were optimistic.

They believed that I would be okay, which gave me hope. I was unable to walk for the first nine weeks after this. I was unable to move any of my body parts for the first couple of weeks, only because my body was in such shock, so strongly thrown out of balance. The only body part I could move for weeks was my head.

I was completely dependent on everybody for everything. From feeding to using the bathroom, I couldn't use my arms, my hands, my legs for anything. I was terrified to be left alone in my hospital room. Is somebody else coming for me? That's all I kept thinking about. And I was terrified. I kept dreaming and having nightmares, reliving it. I kept having flashbacks even in my waking moments.

For the first time in my life, I felt physically vulnerable. I kept thinking, "Somebody's gonna come and kill me." And I couldn't get that out of my mind. And at this point of my life, I wanted to live. That's something I learned from this attack, that I was willing to fight. Because there were times where that little bit of depression would creep in.

But I learned from this sword attack that I'm willing to fight for my life, that I want to live, that I want to do good, and that I will do good. I believe in myself more now than ever. I had caused so many other people this sense of fear where I had altered their lives forever, causing them to be afraid. Now it was me lying in a hospital bed, fearing that death was right around the corner.

I've experienced what it is like to be the one who is carrying out an act of violence because I was struggling, I was suffering, and I wanted to be the one who spread that suffering to others. And now here I was, I...

was now at the hands of somebody else who probably had mental health issues where he wasn't able to get the help he needed and he lashed out because he was angry, he was upset, and he wanted others to feel his pain. So now I know what it's like from both ends.

and I know that mental health, teaching it, educating people on it, making resources available and affordable, this needs to be one of the main priorities in our society right now. This is something I want to work on for the rest of my life. Chronic depression

never really goes away in me. It's just that I've learned how to better cope with it and accept it. I do have my days where I struggle. Even before the sword attack, when I was a free man, I felt great at first, but slowly but surely, the monotony of day-to-day real life on the outside wore down on me and my depression creeped in a little bit.

But I had learned a lot of tools in therapy and that's why I always tell people I wish I had been more open and honest in therapy when I was 15. Because maybe I would have learned those coping mechanisms, those tools, those ways of helping yourself work with the depression and make it through those days without it becoming so much worse.

Since the sword attack, I've obviously had a lot of days where I've struggled, where I don't want to get out of bed because I'm upset that my hands are never going to be the same. And I don't have the ability to go back to work. So yeah, there are days where I do just lay in bed and I allow myself that only for one day at a time. I say, okay, I just don't want to get out of bed today, but tomorrow I'm getting up.

and I set that boundary within myself. I open up to my family, to my friends, and I let them know I'm struggling. I'm not doing well. I need help. And I hope that other people will do that too. Ask for help. Keep asking until you find somebody who's willing and able to be there for you. My life will never be the same because of my injuries, but that doesn't mean my life won't be good.

I've had amazing, wonderful experiences and sometimes I don't know how I got so lucky to make it through the life I've had so far. When I was in prison, people talked a lot about how hurt people hurt people and we don't talk about the other side of that. Healed people heal people and that's what I'm motivated to do now. I've made it through the darkest of times.

Now I want to help other people through their darkest of times. We all have that power. Whatever you've been through, whatever you've experienced, you can help other people. You don't have to be perfect, but we can all do better and help other people do better.

Today's episode featured John Romano. You can find out more about John by following him on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Threads, and Snapchat, all with the same handle, at John Seeking Peace. That's at J-O-N Seeking Peace. If you'd like to reach out to him directly, you can also email him at johnseekingpeace at gmail.com. Again, that's John J-O-N.

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, Andrew Waits, and Aviva Lipkowitz, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westbrook.

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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 Agar.

So here's how this show's 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've 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+, 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+.