ASHEVILLE - Pedro Ventura was in town for one night. He left with his life changed forever.

The lone victim in a downtown shooting on Oct. 5, Ventura was visiting Asheville from Los Angeles for a college friend’s wedding, according to Ezra Glenn, who identified himself as Ventura’s partner.

Glenn said Ventura had attended Scandals Nightclub, located at 11 Grove Street in a building that houses two other entertainment venues. He was waiting outside for his friends, who had caught an Uber from another club, to pick him up just before 2 a.m. when an unknown assailant reportedly drove by and fired into the crowd.

Although there were many people out, Ventura appears to have been the only person hit.

In a GoFundMe page set up to support medical expenses, Glenn explained that the bullet shattered parts of Ventura's spine and severed his spinal cord. He was initially paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe on his own. He has since regained partial control of his breathing and movement in his shoulders, the page said.

'Unclear why this happened'

Glenn told the Citizen Times in an Oct. 21 phone call that Ventura's condition has continued to improve, but that he still requires a ventilator to breathe and is paralyzed from the shoulders down.

He's been moved from Mission Hospital to a facility out-of-state that specializes in spinal injuries. Doctors are hoping to get Ventura breathing independently and into intensive physical therapy soon.

Glenn said Ventura's mind is still sharp and that, though he can't speak due to the ventilator, he has been communicating by nodding and other body language.

"He's mentally very much there, which we’re happy about," Glenn added.

Glenn wasn't in Asheville for the wedding, so he wasn't present on the night of the shooting. But he said he didn't think the shooter specifically meant to hit Ventura, who knew few people in the area.

“It’s very unclear why this happened, but it is pretty clear that Pedro was not the intended target, if there was one," he said.

Ventura is a first-generation immigrant from the Dominican Republic who came to New York City at the age of 4, according to the GoFundMe. After graduating with honors from Wesleyan University in 2010, he established a career in the music industry that took him to Miami and then Los Angeles.

'We just saw it and ran'

Police are still investigating the shooting on Grove Street, APD spokeswoman Christina Hallingse said in an Oct. 21 email. She also said there does not appear to be a relationship between the victim and the shooter.

As with any shooting, there is a threat to public safety, Hallingse acknowledged.

"APD is diligently working to follow all leads and analyze all evidence so that the person(s) responsible can be held accountable," she added.

The Citizen Times obtained transcripts for five 911 calls associated with the incident. In one of them, a caller told an emergency dispatcher there had been 10 shots fired.

"There is one guy down," the caller said. "Send EMS please. ... Please. Hurry."

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In a separate call, a dispatcher asked whether the caller had been able to see the license plate number on the shooter's vehicle.

"I didn't," the caller said. "We just saw it and ran."

The caller said the car's windows were tinted, so they couldn't see what the shooter looked like.

A third caller, who said they had run up to the nearby Wall Street Parking Garage with a group to take cover, told dispatch they were afraid to return to their car.

"Is it — is it safe to go down there? Or should we just say up there?" the caller asked.

"I can tell you the last we heard the suspect vehicle went south, so nowhere near where you're goin'," the dispatcher replied.

Gun violence in Asheville

A police incident report from the shooting lists four vehicles present at the scene with one, a 2018 Toyota Camry, sustaining $1,000 in damage after being struck by a bullet. At least six bullet holes were visible in the glass of the Veach-Baley Federal Building on Patton Avenue across from where Grove intersects with Patton.

Following the incident, Glenn said he looked into recent crime in the Asheville area and found what he thought was a substantial amount of gun violence.

"Asheville obviously has a very good reputation as a place to visit, and I'm sure in 9,999 cases it is and Pedro was just very, very unlucky," he said.

"But I do know that there's also been sort of a history of gun violence in the past few months at least, just based on my cursory research, and I have a lot of questions around why nobody, it seems, was trying to address that before it affected somebody who was from outside the community."

The Asheville Community Crime map shows that downtown, which is one of the town's most densely populated areas, has also had some of the highest levels of violent crime this year. Grove Street is on the cusp of a hot spot.