‘Bullets don’t make U-turns’: Student pushes on after being paralyzed in Five Points shooting

In the blink of an eye, Howard Boone Jr. went from enjoying a night out with his fraternity brothers in Columbia’s Five Points to waking up in a hospital days later, paralyzed from the neck down.

“I don’t remember anything,” Boone, 24, said by phone from his Raleigh home last week. “I just remember waking up in the hospital a week and a half later.”

Hours after the annual St. Pat’s in Five Points festival in 2018, the streets were still packed with revelers when, Columbia police say, a gunman fired several shots into a large crowd around 2 a.m. The accused shooter, Arthur Q. Jones, 23, had been involved in an argument with another man before the shooting, which injured Boone and two other innocent bystanders, police said.

Boone, who is a student at Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, was in South Carolina for a meeting of his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, and was staying in Spartanburg. They decided to head to Columbia to go out in Five Points that night. Things were winding down when they arrived around midnight, Boone said, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary before gunshots shattered the fun atmosphere.

“I wish I did hear something that could indicate something was about to happen,” he said. “Because I probably would have been able to avoid all of this.”

‘There’s always miracles that happen’

Boone was shot in the back of the neck, the bullet damaging his spinal cord.

He spent nearly a month in the hospital in Columbia before being transferred to a rehabilitation center in Atlanta. He arrived back home in Raleigh in May.

“They really didn’t want to say too much to me about the possibilities,” he said of the doctors explaining the extent of his injuries, adding that they often used the phrase “as of now.”

“That’s pretty much what the doctors are still saying to this day,” he said. “There’s always miracles that happen, so they really don’t want to say, ‘Hey, you’re gonna be like this for the rest of your life, paralyzed or whatever the case may be,’ because you never know what’ll happen. Everybody’s body works differently.”

‘Gone in the blink of an eye’

At Saint Augustine’s, Boone had joined the ROTC and had been with the U.S. Army Reserves since 2013.

He completed airborne school at Fort Benning in Georgia before he was shot, jumping out of a plane five times, his mother told The State in the days after he was shot. Now, he’s working to regain use of his neck muscles and, hopefully, mobility in other parts of his body.

“It’s kind of hard at times,” he said of adapting to his new way of life. “But just looking back at the person I used to be and the person I was trying to become — this upcoming May I was supposed to commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.”

“That just kind of helped me put this situation into a better perspective,” he continued. “Because I worked so hard to get to a certain point that, now my life is affected by gun violence, and now everything’s just gone in the blink of an eye. But I’m not gonna let that stop me from trying to motivate people or inspire people.”

‘More awakened to the acts of gun violence’

Since last March, Boone has accomplished a goal he had even before he was shot: Starting his own business.

“I was always looking for names before this accident happened,” he said, adding that he wanted to have a business to come back to after retiring from the Army.

Eventually, he came up with “Legacy 318.” The 318 represents March 18, the day he was shot.

“Everything that I worked toward to get, I always did because I wanted to have something to pass down to my family, my kids, my future wife — something to look at and remember me by whenever I was to leave this earth,” he said, explaining the “legacy” portion of the name. “I want to continue being great, continue to inspire people because that’s just who I am. And I’m not gonna let that date affect me moving forward.”

Boone had his brand, but he still couldn’t decide what to do with it.

“And then it dawned on me: As I’m going through this process, I’m more awakened to the acts of gun violence and the senseless misuse of firearms,” he said. “How can I incorporate this to be an advocate (against) gun violence?”

Now, Boone says, “Legacy” has become an acronym: Let Everything Go And Control Yourself. He wants young people to consider the consequences of their actions before resorting to using guns to solve their problems.

“A lot of times, gun violence is based off emotions, a lot of anger,” he said. “Just think about what you do before you do it. It doesn’t just affect the victims; it affects the family and the suspect’s family as well.”

Kicking gun violence

The first big event by Legacy 318 was this weekend in Raleigh: the Bullets Don’t Make U-Turns Kickball Tournament.

Boone said the name came from a quote that one of his fraternity brothers gave a TV station at an October vigil for him.

“Bullets don’t make U-turns,” he quoted the fraternity brother as saying. “Once you pull that trigger, you never know whose name is written on that bullet.”

In addition to plenty of kickball and music, Saturday’s event featured comments from victims of gun violence and their families, including Boone. Joining him was Kidron Deal, a 21-year-old from Fairfield County who also was injured in last year’s shooting in Five Points. The former football player was shot in the face and spent days on a ventilator afterward.

The two were strangers before the shooting and even several months after, but Boone said he noticed a woman started following him on Facebook. His mother told him it was the mother of one of the other shooting victims. Since the shooting, Deal’s mother has been helpful with getting the organization going and purchasing items like T-shirts and bracelets.

Boone said they want to be examples for young people of what can happen when someone uses a gun to settle a conflict.

“Gun violence, it affects your family and your friends,” he said. “It starts with the youth. Depending on how you grow up, depending on where you grow up in the world, to some people gun violence is a normal thing. Some people don’t understand the severity of how much it could hurt a family or a person or the type of damage it could do. I think we have to start with the youth to make them understand — if they see somebody that they look up to committing a senseless act, they’ll most likely grow up thinking that’s okay. But it’s not.”

In addition to reaching out to young people and deterring them from using firearms, Boone said changes need to be made to laws regulating firearms. He applauded a bill advanced last month by a U.S. House of Representatives panel requiring universal background checks, but said that’s only a start.

“I definitely think there should be more to it,” he said.

Days after the shooting, at an event to kick off Youth Violence Prevention Week, Columbia police Chief Skip Holbrook said the availability of guns is a major factor feeding youth violence.

“Being that I was in the military for five years, I’m not opposed to somebody carrying a weapon,” Boone said. “But it definitely takes a person with good character to do so, because not everybody is capable of carrying a weapon without trying to do something to hurt somebody.”

Making a change

Last year’s shooting in Five Points has tragic parallels to the 2013 shooting that injured University of South Carolina student Martha Childress.

The then-freshman was waiting for a taxi with friends near the Five Points fountain when an errant bullet fired in a nearby fight hit her in the back, paralyzing her from the waist down. The gang member who shot Childress was found guilty of attempted murder and weapon charges, and sentenced to 40 years in prison. 

Incidentally, last year’s shooting came days after an investigation by The State into Five Points’ identity crisis, which included a look at how major violent crimes in the district had actually decreased in the years since the Childress shooting. 

Arthur Jones, the accused gunman in last year’s shooting, faces up to 30 years in prison on each of the three attempted murder counts he is charged with. He’s been jailed on $3 million bond since the shooting.

Boone said he is asked often if he has forgiven Jones. It’s hard for him to put his feelings for Jones into words, though. He thinks Jones should go to prison, but maybe not for the maximum sentence.

“I don’t hate him. I don’t have hate for nobody,” Boone said. “But being that I have to live in this (paralyzed) state right now, it’s kind of hard. I have to deal with this every day, my family has to deal with this every day, my friends have to deal with this every day.”

For the most part, Boone tries not to think about the night he was shot or what he would say to the man who allegedly pulled the trigger.

Instead, he’s looking to the future and hoping to make a difference with his new organization. People have told him he’s an inspiration or a motivation. That helps him keep going, he said, along with support from family and friends.

“I have my ups and my downs,” he said. “I know I have people still counting on me to do better and counting on me to make a change somewhere in this world.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2019 at 5:43 AM.