INDIANAPOLIS — Gun violence isn't just affecting one area of Indianapolis, it has reached all corners of the city, impacting people of all ages.
Muhammad Elamin, 60, is still healing after being shot this past April. He hopes sharing his experience helps stop the senseless violence.
“I pray and sometimes I even cry because we got to do better,” he said.
Elamin admits he doesn’t have the answer when it comes to curbing gun violence.
“There was two holes in my head and blood was running down my face, out of my mouth and out of my nose,” he said.
He said that despite the chaos of that day, he remembers a woman helping him.
“She was putting pressure on the wound while I was laying there,” he said. “I asked her, I said, ‘I’m bleeding.’ She said, ‘They’re shooting. They’re shooting.’”
That moment changed his life.
He spent two months recovering in IU Health Methodist Hospital after doctors operated and lost him two times on the table, bringing him back each time.
“That’s why the doctors kept calling me that miracle patient,” Elamin said.
He said he remembers laying in a hospital bed, hearing about more shootings both locally and across the country.
“I’m sitting in the bed fighting for my life and I hear come across there that some guy went into a school and shot up the school and my heart just fell out and I started praying,” Elamin remembered.
Despite IMPD having 330 camera views across the city, to this day, Elamin still doesn’t know who’s responsible for him losing his right eye and the titanium plate that now makes up half of his face, not to mention the excruciating pain in his head that he wakes up with most days.
“I can’t hardly see. I’m just learning how to walk back all over again,” he said.
At the time of the shooting, the city hadn’t yet started installing its new license plate readers. That started nearly two weeks ago, adding to the 50 IMPD already had in use. By early September, the city plans to have a total of 244 license plate readers up and running.
“No one knows and this is crazy. I still say somebody got to know,” Elamin said of the person who shot him.
For now, he’s focusing on healing and talking more about what happened, hoping to bring awareness to the victims of gun violence who survive and what life looks like for them in the aftermath.
“I’m here for a reason, undoubtedly. I don’t know what the reason is, but whatever God has planned for me to do, I want to do,” Elamin said.