ROSWELL, New Mexico (KCBD) – Roswell, New Mexico, made headlines in 2014 when a 12 year old opened fire in the gym before school began.
Now, 10 years later, Nathaniel Tavarez opens up about the ordeal and where life has taken him since he was critically injured in that shooting.
First, let’s revisit back 10 years ago.
In Lubbock, a huge team of doctors worked on 12-year-old Tavarez when he was airlifted to University Medical Center.
Dr. Tiva Kasemsri, a pediatric internist, said Tavarez came to the emergency room in shock.
Dr. Thomas McGill, a pediatric surgeon, said he had multiple holes in his face.
Dr. Frank Quattromani, a pediatric radiologist, said, “I honestly thought it would end in the emergency room.”
Tavarez was critically injured when a 7th grader pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of his gym bag and fired three random shots. He didn’t notice at first when he was hit in the back.
“I started to hear the loud ringing in my ears, and everybody was screaming. And at that point, I had thought the school had blown up,” he said.
Then, he turned around. That’s when the third and final shot hit him from the front from his head to his waist, primarily on the left side.
The imaging scans reveal a white dot where every pellet is stuck in his body… and there are likely more than a thousand of them.
He says now, “Literally, in the blink of an eye, my life was changed forever.”
Now, 10 years later, he has written a book with that title, “In the Blink of an Eye”.
He says he went to the correctional facility to face the boy who shot him in junior high. The boy apologized and explained that even though the boy, who bullied him in school was not there that day, he wanted to get the point across that he was tired of being bullied.
He fired those random shots to make a statement. For that, Tavarez is blind in his left eye, nearly blind in his other eye, and suffers many physical restrictions. He also needs to be checked…
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