‘I saw pure black’: A shotgun blast pulverized Amedy Dewey's face. What now?

Jan. 6, 2018, Orlando, Florida.

Waiting on a plane, stuck at an airport in Florida, after a weeklong cruise with her daughter in the Bahamas, as the flight from Orlando to Grand Rapids kept getting delayed — one hour, then another — Lisa Somers filled the time by scrolling through her phone, and she found something strange.

“What’s a Snapcode?” she asked her 18-year-old daughter, Amedy Dewey.

“That's for Snapchat,” Amedy said of the instant messaging app.

“Your stepdad has one,” Lisa said.

Amedy couldn’t understand it. David Somers, her stepfather, hated social media.

“Why would he have a Snapchat?” Amedy asked.

Lisa used David’s email to break into his Snapchat account, then she handed her phone to Amedy because she didn’t know how to use the app.

Within no time, Amedy discovered a string of messages and raunchy photos that made it clear: David was having an affair with one of Amedy’s friends, a 16-year-old.

Lisa was furious. She called her husband and screamed at him.

“She was just exploding — ‘You’re horrible!’ ” Amedy said. “Calling him every name in the book.”

Amedy was angry but not surprised. She had suspected something for months but now had proof.

Lisa dug through the messages, finding more notes, more pictures. David and his teenage mistress (In Michigan, 16 is the age of sexual consent) had exchanged messages about starting a family and picked out future baby names. She screamed into the phone, repeating words that David had written to the 16-year-old. “Why would you say this?” Lisa screamed. “How could you do this to me?”

Lisa received a text message from David with a photo of him holding a gun. “He was like, ‘I'll do it, I'll end it now,’ ” Amedy said.

Lisa and Amedy boarded the plane and it left the gate at 5:31 p.m.

“A voice in my head,” Amedy said, “it was not my voice; I don't know whose voice, but it told me to tell your mother you love her and tell her you're sorry for being such a rotten child.”

Amedy told her mother those exact words.

“My mother laughed,” Amedy said. “She said, ‘you are not a rotten child — you are just mouthy.’ ”

Amedy, a competitive cheerleader at Midland High School, and Lisa shared many of the same traits. Lisa once posted on Facebook: “I was born with my heart on my sleeve, a fire in my soul and a mouth I cannot control.”

The plane arrived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at Gerald R. Ford International Airport at approximately 8:25 p.m., according to police records. Amedy had a horrible feeling — she didn’t want to leave in a vehicle with David. She urged her mother to get a ride with somebody else — anybody — but she refused. Lisa didn’t have a timid bone in her body. She was an athlete, a born competitor, and she still played adult softball. Lisa was always bold, direct and fearless; and there was no way she was going to delay this. She was ready to confront David.

He picked them up in a silver 2011 Chevy Equinox.

“I want to drive,” Lisa said.

But Dave wouldn’t let her.

Amedy sunk into the back seat on the passenger’s side, directly behind her mother.

Amedy contacted Becki Hoon, her legal guardian — Amedy was living with Hoon in Midland because she was having issues with David.

“I get in the back seat, and I'm actually on the phone with Becki,” Amedy said. “I told her, ‘you can cut the air with a knife, the tension is so thick in this vehicle.’ ”

It almost goes unnoticed

At this point, I should explain my personal connection to this story. Becki Hoon was in my wedding more than 30 years ago. My wife, Teresa, Becki and Lisa Somers grew up together in Ludington, a tourist town on the shores of Lake Michigan. They were in the same high school graduating class and were teammates. I am Facebook friends with Becki, although we have seen each other only a few times in the last 30 years. But she sent me a note earlier this year: “Hey, would you be interested in doing a piece on Amedy?” she asked.

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“She wants her story out there of what happened,” Becki wrote. "She wants to talk to people. By the way, she was an athlete."

I didn’t know Amedy, had never met Lisa and didn’t know what had happened. But I soon learned what happened and was stunned that she was involved in a tragic shooting six years ago.

How did I not know about this?

That underscores a big point: So many people have been shot in America — 327 every day, according to the Brady Center — the waves of violence can surround you even when you are not paying attention.

But what happens after the TV trucks go away and the nation focuses on the next shooting?

What becomes of the survivors?

A frightening drive

According to witness statements, 911 calls, police records obtained through a Freedom of Information request and interviews with the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, this is what happened that night:

As David drove away from the airport, Lisa quickly brought up the affair, and they started screaming at each other.

David slammed on the accelerator.

“If I’m going down, you’re going down,” David yelled.

Driving east on Interstate 96 toward Lansing, David said hacking a Snapchat account was a federal offense and that both Lisa and Amedy could be charged.

“Accusations left and right,” Amedy said. “Just bogus stuff I don't even know about and then he brought me into it. Of course, I stuck up for myself. At this point he was driving very erratically — very, very erratically.”

“Can I ask one question?” Amedy asked.

“Yes,” David replied.

“Why a 16-year-old?” Amedy asked. “I don’t understand.”

David became enraged. He swerved and almost tail-ended another car.

“You are crazy!” Amedy screamed.

“Do you want to see how crazy I’ll get?” David screamed.

Amedy screamed back: “Yeah, show us crazy.”

About 20 minutes after leaving the airport, on a deserted stretch of highway, in a cold dark desolate area with nothing but cornfields and woodlots, David veered off the road and stopped. He got out and went around back.

Amedy and Lisa opened their doors to get out.

“Amedy, he’s got a gun,” Lisa screamed. “Get back in the car.”

Pure disbelief

Amedy never thought he’d do it. Never thought he’d pull the trigger. Never thought she was in any real danger.

“After all the abuse and everything he's done to me — he’s beat me black and blue — I still truly felt he could never kill me,” Amedy said. “At the end of the day, I didn’t think he'd shoot me.”       

Amedy turned her head as the shotgun went off.

“He put the barrel over the back seat to get to me,” Amedy said. “He was aiming at the back of my head, and actually, if I did not turn my head the second I did, I would not be here today.”

The slug pulverized her face, destroyed her cheek and jaw, blew away her eye socket and most of her teeth, damaged her optic nerve, wrecked both eyes and left a gaping hole in her cheek. Her nose and upper lip were hanging by threads.

And she blacked out.

When Amedy regained consciousness, she touched her face and felt something slimy.

“Oh, my God, he shot me!” Amedy remembers thinking.

She couldn’t see out of either eye.

“I saw pure black,” she said. “My ears were ringing and everything came up from my stomach. Everything. I was heaving, just profusely.”

She remembers thinking: There's no way I'm going to let him kill me. I'm not dying. I need to get help.

She tried to access her phone but couldn’t see.

“Hey, Siri, call 911,” she tried to say but mumbled the words. The slug had split the roof of her mouth and shattered her front teeth. She sounded like she had a mouthful of food.

She climbed into the front seat and grabbed the steering wheel, feeling for the lights, leaving bloody smears that would baffle police. She flashed the lights and honked the horn, hoping someone would stop, and then crawled into the back seat. She was freezing cold — the temperature below zero.

A voice popped into her head, or maybe, it was the strongest urge of her life: Get help.

She climbed out of the car, feeling her way around the back of the vehicle, leaving a trail of bloody handprints and smears across the Equinox.

Standing by the highway, she waved her arms but nobody stopped.

I can’t do this, she thought.

She returned to the vehicle, crawled into the back seat and lay down. She was bleeding profusely.

Time passed. Nobody stopped.

That voice returned: You can't die like this. You are 18 years old. Fight for your life.

“I got back up out of the car again,” she said.

She felt her way around the vehicle again, came to the road and a truck blew by so close to her that a gust of wind nearly knocked her down — a feeling that would come back to her in PTSD attacks.

Wearing only a sweatshirt — freezing cold, shivering, losing strength — she had lost a lot of blood and was growing weak. “I could feel my body getting heavier and heavier,” she said.

She returned to the vehicle, crawled into the back seat and started to drift away. She remembers one final thought before passing out: This is how I'm going to die.

This is the first chapter of a five-part series in which Detroit Free Press columnist Jeff Seidel shares the story of a Michigan survivor of gun violence. Contact Jeff Seidel: [email protected] or follow him @seideljeff.

Read chapter 2 of Amedy's story:'He shot me'