'I'm still here'
John Paul III was shot 10 times last year and now navigates immense physical challenges. It wasn’t the first time gun violence turned his family upside down.
It was 2 in the morning, and John Paul III was certain he was about to be robbed at gunpoint.
He’d stepped outside to catch up with a friend who was walking by — the pandemic lockdown was in its early stages, and any chance to chat in person was a gift. Three men they didn’t recognize surrounded them, and 21-year-old Paul panicked.
So he grabbed his own handgun — the one he kept with him for protection — and tried to fire a warning shot. But when he squeezed the trigger, he said, nothing happened. He’d forgotten to load it.
One of the strangers blasted away, hitting Paul 10 times during what police would later say was a botched robbery in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood. Paul was rushed to the hospital, where he went into cardiac arrest and was resuscitated twice. One of the bullets struck his spinal cord, leaving him partially paralyzed.
The shooting happened on April 17, 2020, the start of what became one of Philadelphia’s worst stretches of gun violence in generations. Paul was one of 2,200 people wounded by gunfire in the city last year, three-quarters of them Black men, according to police statistics. The epidemic that dramatically escalated last spring has yet to abate, and this year, an additional 2,000 people have been shot.
The city has seen a record number of homicides. More victims are like Paul — they survived being shot, but must navigate immense physical challenges.
The shooting also underscores another reality: Many who live in neighborhoods most affected by gun violence arm themselves as a means of protection, and plenty who carry are like Paul and do so out of fear of seeing more loved ones taken.
Paul knows well the devastating effects of perpetual gunfire. When he was 13, two men with guns burst into his family’s home, demanding cash that was not there. His father was shot and killed. His mother was shot at least a dozen times, and survived. Sherrell Paul spent part of 2012 hospitalized.
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So while she waited outside Temple University Hospital last year as her son fought for his life, Sherrell Paul knew he could make it — because she’d survived it, too. And today, she’s focused on helping him in his recovery, which will be long.
In the 20 months since he was shot, he has relearned how to do almost everything. He regained the ability to speak, saying his first word, “Mom,” the week of Mother’s Day last year. He used a wheelchair, then a walker, and can now — after months of intense physical therapy — walk on his own, though unsteadily. He still has trouble using his hands.
Paul says he’s just grateful to be alive. A Roman Catholic graduate, Paul was attending Thomas Jefferson University and working part-time as a clerk at a law firm when he was shot. He still could not escape the pervasiveness of gun violence — he has lost five friends to bullets in the last five years.
“My normal isn’t like a regular person’s normal,” he said. “In that neighborhood, it’s a lot of shootings and gun violence. Everyday stuff.”
Two shootings, one solved
Paul bought his first firearm at a gun show the week he turned 21, thinking it might spare him from another random act of violence. His life had already been shaped by bullets.
He recalled his father, John Paul Jr., slumped on the floor after being shot twice at point-blank range on that March night in 2012.
Then-13-year-old Paul called 911 and yelled to his mother, a nurse, “You gotta put pressure on Daddy’s wounds!”
As she bled on the floor herself, she had told her son:, “Mommy can’t do it. You have to do it.”
Investigators believe the men broke into the wrong house. Jennifer Selber, then the homicide chief in the District Attorney’s Office, said she can’t recall another victim she’s worked with who survived as many gunshots as Sherrell Paul. There were more than a dozen entrance and exit wounds.
“It was miraculous,” Selber said.
Sherrell Paul spent a month in the hospital and had four surgeries, including a total leg reconstruction. In the years since, her physical health has rebounded, and she believes deeply that surviving was part of a greater plan. Now she knows just how to care for her oldest son.
“I’m here for a reason,” she said. “Nobody is going to take care of my babies the way I take care of my babies.”
The emotional wounds are still deep. The perpetrators “turned our lives upside down,” she said. Her husband is gone, and her two sons live with the memory of seeing both of their parents with gunshot wounds.
The intruders are serving life sentences.
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Paul, meanwhile, has not seen his shooter brought to justice. Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said both Paul and his friend told detectives they believed they were being robbed, and investigators interviewed another witness who corroborated the account.
He said police had a “very good person of interest,” but weren’t able to collect enough evidence to definitively identify that person as the triggerman.
‘A whole new person’
The Pauls no longer live in the Strawberry Mansion home, but one in a different part of Philadelphia that’s accessible, complete with a long access ramp that friends helped pay for.
Paul’s healing will take significantly longer than his mother’s did. Spinal cord injuries can cause permanent paralysis below the point of impact, because they interrupt the path the brain uses to send messages to other parts of the body. His injury is “incomplete,” meaning he has regained some motor ability below the spot the bullet pierced.
Still, basic functions like eating and walking require intense exertion.
At a recent therapy session at Magee Rehabilitation, he stood on a treadmill-like machine while attached to a harness that hung from the ceiling. Two aides moved his legs while a therapist stabilized his back in a movement that simulates walking, an exercise so tiring that sweat dripped down his nose and he gasped for breath.
By the end of the year, he hopes to be able to do a push-up. He practices on the floor of his home several times a week.
He’s aiming to get back to work to relieve some of the pressure his mother feels to be the breadwinner, but he’s not physically ready to return to college, where he was studying occupational therapy. Mostly, he wants to be able to drive again so, even with injured hands and legs, he can run errands for his mother.
He often tries to convince her he’s fine.
“I’m still here, and everything happens for a reason,” he said recently. “I’m still the same.”
Sherrell Paul responded softly.
“You’re not the same,” she said. “You’re a whole new person, and you don’t even realize it.”
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