Posted on 06/04/2010 5:19:14 AM PDT by Born Conservative
DANVILLE — Jeff Blue was taking his last walk in the woods before the end of spring gobbler season Monday morning.
"I made one last call on the top of the hollow," he said, "and was calling a hen turkey sound."
Eighteen yards away, and downhill, stood Michael Todd Kelly, with a borrowed Mossberg 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun.
Blue heard a loud noise, and was knocked to the ground.
"I may have been unconscious for 10 seconds, but realization set in," he said. "I yelled, 'Don't shoot. Don't shoot. You shot me.'"
There was a pause. Then Kelly yelled at him, Blue said.
"I was doing absolutely nothing wrong," Blue said.
Kelly approached him, saying, "I'm going to jail. I'm going to jail."
How do I look? Blue asked.
Replied Kelly: "Not good."
Twenty-seven pellets hit hunter
Blue, 52, of Danville, a father of two adult children, sat in a chair Wednesday in his room at Geisinger Medical Center.
"The memories," he said, "are pretty intense."
He had been on a tram road near Woodhill Road, on Montour Ridge in Mahoning Township, Montour County.
"It was the first time I walked in those woods this year," he said. "It's nice to walk on the tram road and (it's) a pretty walk."
Blue, of 860 Kaseville Road, left his truck at 9:51 Monday morning. The tram road about three miles from his home, had just been timbered.
He usually hunts alone, but always tells someone where he will be.
"I enjoy being by myself in the woods," he said.
Only Monday morning, he wasn't alone. A convicted felon, Kelly, for whom it was illegal to possess a gun, was to his east and fired his shotgun.
Brush, Blue said, absorbed some of the 180 to 200 pellets from what game commission officials think was a 2 and three-quarter inch shot.
Twenty-seven pellets entered Blue, in his head, neck and shoulder.
"The pain," Blue said, "was unbelievable."
"He left me by myself"
Get my cell phone and dial 911, Blue asked Kelly.
"I didn't know if I would pass out giving directions," Blue said. "He opened the phone. I thought he dialed, but I realized he wasn't talking.
"I asked him if he called and he said he hadn't."
Blue took the phone and called his fiancee, Stephanie Shumaker, who is a Geisinger nurse.
It was 10:41 a.m.
Because cell phone service is unreliable at their house, she repeated to him what she thought he said, that he was shot and needed an ambulance.
"As I was driving, I called 911," Shumaker said.
And Kelly, and his uncle, Sam Kelly, who had just arrived at the shooting scene, were fleeing.
"He left me by myself," Blue said, with one of the men saying he would be back with help.
After Danville police Officer J.D. Stanley and an ambulance arrived, "I expected when Officer Stanley cut my shirt and pants off, to see my elbow blown apart," Blue said.
Fiancee spots suspect in car
One pellet went through Blue's his nose. Others passed through skin on his forehead and lodged in his right ear, right cheek and behind his right eye.
Another pellet put a hole in his pharynx.
And one was two millimeters from the carotid artery.
Despite blood in his eyes, Blue provided a good description of the man, said Shumaker, his fiancee.
"After he was loaded in the ambulance and when I was walking to my car, I saw a beaten-up Volvo making a U-turn and the guy in the front passenger seat fit the description to a T," she said.
She repeated the license plate to her daughter until she found a pen to write it down.
Stanley, the Danville officer, radioed the information and Riverside police stopped the vehicle carrying Kelly and his uncle.
They said they weren't involved.
"They asked him for his shirt as evidence and took his picture," Shumaker said.
Later, in the hospital, Blue identified Michael Todd Kelly as the man in the picture.
Sore, but walking, eating solid food
"The first day, the pain was unbearable," said Blue, who has been taking antibiotics and steroids for inflammation.
Blue said Wednesday he felt "fabulous ... compared with yesterday" and may be released today from the hospital. He was able to get up and walk Wednesday and eat solid food.
His right arm, shoulder and neck are sore from where pellets entered.
Physicians are keeping an eye on a pellet on top of his thyroid. Some of the pellets can eventually work themselves out, Blue said.
"He," Shumaker said, "was very lucky."
Suspect jailed; victim angry
Kelly, 44, of Danville, of 102 Beaver Place, faces six charges, including illegally possessing a gun because he is a convicted felon and failure to aid Blue.
Blue said he will eventually have to face Kelly, who police say admitted to the shooting, in court. Kelly was committed to Montour County Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail.
"I'm sure he wishes he could do it over again," Blue said. "You pull the trigger. It's done."
Hunting accidents happen, said Blue, an avid sportsman since he was 12 and a turkey hunter for 30 years.
"But you have to follow rules," Blue said. "Number 1 is to (identify) the target and what's beyond the target. This peer pressure of harvesting game and more so with turkeys has to somehow be eliminated.
"Don't shoot at sounds or movement. ... I hunt on a lot of private land and a lot of times I've heard a hen yelping back at me, but there's the possibility that's a hunter. No matter how good it sounds, a lot of guys out there sound like the real thing. ... Once you pull the trigger, you can't take it back. You never think it will happen to you."
On Monday on Montour Ridge, Blue hadn't seen any turkeys and wasn't expecting to because it was late morning and very hot — "but still you have hope," he said.
"I realize accidents do happen but I'm angry about being shot," Blue said. "It was a foolish decision he made."
His hospitalization has brought family and friends visiting and calling — "people I haven't talked to in years," he said. "It puts life in perspective and shows how precious and how quickly for whatever reason it can be gone," said Blue, a father of Matthew, 24, and Katie, 20.
And although he will continue to hunt turkeys, he probably won't set foot along the Montour County trail where he was shot.
"I may walk along the ridge," he said, "but there's a good chance I will never walk along that tram road."
I know that area, it is really beautiful and Geisinger is one of the very best hospitals. Doctor owned.
So was this public hunting land, or what? Did I miss whose land this was?
I don’t think that it’s state game land, but it is probably public land.
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