Bobby Gordon spent his 17th birthday Monday eating cake and ice cream and recovering from gunshot wounds.
Gordon received the wounds in his upper shoulder after a late-night shooting Sunday on Basket Street.
On Monday, classmates of the Greenwood High School junior packed into his house on Cypress Avenue to celebrate his birthday and his life.
Gordon's mother, Shirmona, feels blessed that he survived."He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time."
Gordon sat in his uncle's El Camino on Sunday night outside the home of Artez Gray on Basket Street.
The car pointed away from the street, into the dark gravel alley behind the Tote-a-Bag on Mississippi 7.
His uncle had just stepped inside to visit with Gray. Gordon shifted over to the driver's seat to listen to music. The driving rain pounded the vehicle's roof.
Just as he turned down the volume, shots erupted from behind. "I didn't see it coming."
Gordon struggled to get the car in reverse. The sound of gunfire grew louder, so he swung open the door and rushed out into the cold downpour.
"It was a racket. It was like 'pow pow pow,'" the youth said.
As he ran for cover, a bullet whizzed by and grazed his right shoulder. It didn't stop him.
Running completely on instinct and adrenaline, Gordon made a split-second decision.
Instead of running toward the dark house, Gordon took off toward a well-lit service station.
The young man could see not see his assailants through the heavy curtain of rain. Gordon thinks it was more than one person fired shots, and they walked.
As he crossed the big, empty field between the gas station and Basket Street, a second bullet ripped open his wounded shoulder.
He clutched his shoulder in pain, staggered and fell. "I just kept thinking, 'I can't go out like this. I got too much to live for.'"
Finally, he made it to the Shell-Go, where the clerk called for help.
When the phone rang at the Gordon residence on Cypress Avenue, Shirmona Gordon cringed to hear the news. "It's the phone call any parent dreads."
Just a few inches higher, police said, and Shirmona Gordon would have lost her only son to a high-powered weapon.
The youth and his mother met at Greenwood Leflore Hospital. His bicep has a hole, where the bullet ripped through his arm.
Emergency medical personnel treated and released Gordon to his mother.
