A bullet can’t stop his heart, or his game

Graduation day at Palisades High is June 21, and Paul Davis-Mitchell can’t wait.

“I might even cry because I made it,” he said.

A 6-foot-2 starting guard and captain for the basketball team, Davis-Mitchell is one of those teenagers his teachers will never forget.

“He’s an unbelievably quality human being,” basketball Coach James Paleno said.

It makes what happened to Davis-Mitchell last summer even more implausible.

He wrote an essay, about his experience and received recognition for it from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

“Most challenging obstacles people face are said by the person to have ruined their lives forever. This is only true if that person will allow the experience to ruin their lives.

“The date of Aug. 23, 2006 my life changed within a blink of an eye. I sat in my living room on the computer along with my younger brother singing gospel music. We were in a joyous mood and all of a sudden one sound took over our joy with this sense of terror and uncertainty.

“I heard five gunshots. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Immediately, there was a reflex in me that automatically caused me to grab my neck. I look down and blood is all over my hands and on the floor.”

Davis-Mitchell was staying at his mother’s house in South Los Angeles. Someone drove by in a car and started shooting.

“There was just no reason for it,” said Gary Beecher, police activities coordinator for the LAPD Southwest Division. “The rival gangs were hot at the time and were looking for bodies to shoot at. They randomly fired inside the window.”

A bullet passed through Davis-Mitchell’s neck and struck his younger brother in the mouth.

“Holding my neck as I walk down to my uncle’s house, I am becoming more and more hoarse. I told my uncle that I was hit and I see the anger and fear in his eyes. My aunt begins to yell and scream. I am still calm and also nervous holding my neck. My uncle sits me down on the porch as we wait for the ambulance.”

While holding a towel on his neck to stop the bleeding, Davis-Mitchell said he felt scared.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said. “The main thing was not to panic.”

That’s when his basketball training took over. All through the years, he learned when the going gets tough, he’s not supposed to give in.

“It caused me to think about everything I had going for me, and I wasn’t going to give up,” he said. “Instead of letting myself get weaker and weaker, I brought out my inner strength.”

“There was a woman who came and held my hand while I prayed. She kept telling me I would be OK. The ambulance finally arrived and took me on my way. Inside the ambulance, I felt scared. Worrying about what would happen to my brother and I, I fell asleep and woke up two days later.

“When I woke up I could not speak so I wrote. The first question I asked was where my little brother was. He was in the room next to me. The bullet went through my thyroid and hit my brother at the top of his mouth. I was told that if it were not for me my brother would not have made it. The bullet was slowed down by going through me, which saved my littler brother’s life.”

Davis-Mitchell spent five days in intensive care. He was back at Palisades for the first day of his senior year on Sept. 6.

When Palisades had tryouts for the basketball team a couple of weeks later, Davis-Mitchell was there.

“He’s diving headfirst on the blacktop,” Paleno said. “He was so excited to be back playing.”

Davis-Mitchell is set to enroll at Hampton University in Virginia this fall, and plans to major in business management and try to make the basketball team as a walk-on.

“I have thought about this incident every day since. Every time I think about it I realize that I definitely have a purpose on earth. I survived because God has a plan for me. My brother survived because God has a plan for him.

“This incident has changed my life forever and it continues to be my motivation. I will not settle for failure. I will accomplish all goals I set for myself. I have nothing to lose.”

Davis-Mitchell said he learned an important lesson from his ordeal.

“Life is precious,” he said.

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.