Suzette Hackney

suzette.hackney@indystar.com

DeAndre Knox is more infant than teenager. He cannot walk. He cannot talk. He wears a diaper and a bib because he constantly drools. He must be lifted in and out of his bed and his wheelchair. He can support the weight of his head for only about a minute before it falls to his chest. He whimpers and whines to communicate discomfort.

Yes, DeAndre is essentially a baby, a 15-year-old baby. But he also is a miracle child. He should be dead.

On Feb. 1, 2014, DeAndre attended a friend’s birthday party. The gathering, promoted on social media, drew a large crowd. At one point, a group of people were told to leave after instigating a tussle inside the house.

Moments later, someone — no one was ever arrested — fired a gun into the house more than 20 times. DeAndre, a high honor roll student at Imagine Indiana Life Sciences Academy West and a basketball and football standout, was the only person hit.

It took one bullet to the left side of his head to severely, permanently alter the course of DeAndre’s life.

We talk often in this city, and we should, about murder victims, the scores of people every year whose lives end, most often in a flash of bullets. But what about the survivors, the people whose bodies are torn and mangled by gun violence? What becomes of them? What happens to their families?

DeAndre’s story represents the long roads of suffering and healing so many must travel.

By the time DeAndre arrived at the hospital, he was nearly brain dead. The left side of his skull was all but gone, and he had suffered eight strokes near the brain stem. His head was swollen with fluid; emergency room doctors at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health told DeAndre’s family that the first priority was to perform surgery to reduce the pressure on his brain. Otherwise, he would suffer permanent damage or die.

After four hours of surgery, doctors informed his family that although DeAndre had survived the procedure, he still was likely to die. If DeAndre didn’t die from the brain injury, the family was told, then he would die from lung failure. Doctors gave him three days at most.

DeAndre languished for five days. Doctors advised his mother, DeAndra Yates, to remove him from life support. Two hours after that discussion, Yates said she was by her son’s side saying her reluctant goodbyes when he opened his eyes. She had not yet given the medical professionals permission to do anything because she was coming to grips with the fact she was about to lose her son.

“I don’t know if there was ever anything in me that was going to let Dre go, but when I saw his eyes open, that was the moment when I knew he was telling me: ‘Momma, fight for me,’” Yates, 33, said. “Doctors had told me to pull the plug, but slowly and steadily every one of his organs began to recover, and his brain began repairing itself.”

DeAndre remained in a vegetative state for about two weeks, but he was able to open his eyes. Doctors removed the ventilator, and he was able to breathe on his own.

Two years later, DeAndre lives under constant care in a group home and undergoes therapy at a rehab center in Carbondale, Ill. Yates and her 11-year-old son Darrius drive four hours from Indianapolis to southern Illinois to see DeAndre once or twice a month. When DeAndre sees his mother and brother, his face lights up with a big smile. He excitedly rocks back and forth in his wheelchair and attempts to give a thumbs up.

I recently traveled there with them to meet the miracle child who was wheeled out of Riley 35 days after being shot in the head.

His family initially tried to take care of him at home in Indy when he first was released from the hospital. But it was a struggle. On July 14, 2014, he had to return to the hospital to get his skull repaired. He remained in the hospital for two months.

Yates said she tried to arrange long-term care for her son but was frustrated by what she saw as limited local options — only a few nursing homes take in children. Yates said DeAndre would not have received rehab treatment at those facilities, only basic care.

One of DeAndre’s counselors broke it down: “She told me that Dre is a black kid with a gunshot wound — he’s not going to get the support he needs here,” Yates said.

Eight months after he was shot, DeAndre was moved to Illinois. The transition has been difficult. Yates calls her son every night or every other night. The staff holds the phone to his ear. When he hears her voice he begins breathing heavily.

“It’s the greatest sacrifice I’ve had to make,” Yates said of sending her child away for care. Her voice broke, and she sighed deeply. “For me it’s even harder because I can’t talk to him like other parents can talk to their kids.”

DeAndre is the youngest resident in the home and the only housemate who cannot walk. His residence is provided through a company called NeuroRestorative, which offers community-based services for children and adults with brain injuries.

Care and rehabilitation for DeAndre costs $160,000 a year and is covered by Medicaid. He is transported to rehab five days a week, sometimes twice a day, for physical, occupational and speech therapy and emotional counseling.

Dr. Kathy Mileur, NeuroRestorative’s supervisor of physical therapy, said the goal is to help DeAndre become stronger and improve his functionality in life — better muscle control and less assistance in moving from his chair to a bed.

It’s difficult to know how DeAndre’s brain is functioning, because he does not speak. No one knows whether he understands where he is, that he was shot, or that he is severely disabled.

“We know his awareness has improved,” Mileur told me. “He’s always recognized his family, but now he recognizes certain staff. He’s able to wiggle and dance in his chair when he hears certain music. But it’s very difficult to tell completely, because he cannot communicate.”

Added Yates: “The truth is we don’t know how Dre feels. I’m very grateful for Dre’s spirit — for the most part he is happy and bubbly.”

Yates often relives the day her son was shot. DeAndre had begged her to attend his friend’s party. She said she had a bad feeling about letting him go to a house party, but she was reassured that it would be chaperoned by adults. DeAndre was to attend the gathering with the son and daughter of her best friend, which also comforted her. She said she had no idea the party had been promoted on Facebook and Instagram, essentially an open invitation to strangers.

DeAndre left home at 8 p.m. Three hours later, Yates said she sent a text to her best friend’s daughter to check on them. She messaged back that they were fine.

Then, at 11:37 p.m., her best friend called to deliver the worst news of Yates' life: “Get to Riley Hospital! Dre has been shot!”

“When you raise your kid a certain way, and you are living a certain way, you don’t think it can happen to you,” Yates said. “I don’t want to forget that child I sent out with his brother to school on that Friday morning. I don’t want to forget that child and that night — the last time he was able to hug me.”

DeAndre’s father, Gerald Keys, has dipped in and out of his life, according to Yates. When DeAndre was shot, he met her at the hospital and for weeks didn’t leave. Just like Yates, Keys would leave briefly to shower, change clothes and return to DeAndre’s side. Even when DeAndre was released, his father showed up at the house for two weeks to help with his care. Then he disappeared, Yates said.

“He just faded out,” she said.

Yates doesn’t have time to be bitter. She is graceful in her grief. Her life too, has been forever altered. Yates taught in the medical assistance program at Medtech College, but she missed so much work that her employer eventually didn’t renew her contract. To make ends meet she now teaches CPR to individuals or groups that need to be certified.

Yates also spends a significant amount of time helping other families whose lives have been shattered by bullets. When 10-year-old DeShaun Swanson was gunned down last September while attending a memorial service on Indy’s Northside, Yates comforted and counseled his mother.

She also is involved with Everytown for Gun Safety — a national organization that works to end gun violence and build safer communities — and with It Takes Us, a project that examines the impact of gun violence on survivors and the friends and family of victims.

This month, Yates joined President Obama in the White House East Room as he unveiled a number of executive actions to curb illegal gun trafficking. As hard as it was for her to believe she was in the presence of the president, it was even more difficult to accept why she was there.

Through it all, she believes there is a purpose for her pain.

“I want to make this my life’s work,” Yates said of her activism. “It’s rewarding and fulfilling on a personal level, but it’s not financially. I have to figure out how to keep supporting these families who have been through what I have, but I also need to support my family.”

Yates is a doting mother to her younger son, Darrius, who was 9 when DeAndre was shot. He still won’t talk about the shooting. When he sees his brother these days, he lifts DeAndre’s head to look in his eyes. He does it repeatedly as his brother’s head begins to fall.

“He’s so strong — he’s my rock,” Yates said of Darrius. “If he catches me weeping in my room, he’ll come in and say, ‘It will be OK, Momma.’ But this situation has put him in a lonely place. He misses his brother.”

DeAndre’s long-term health remains tenuous. In October, the shunt in his head that reduces the fluid on his brain became infected, causing severe seizures. Doctors wanted to airlift him from Carbondale to the nearest children’s hospital in St. Louis, but it was too foggy. So they made the two-hour drive in an ambulance.

Yates was in Denver at a gun violence prevention conference when she got the phone call. Organizers flew her into St. Louis. DeAndre was very sick when she got there. He was rushed to surgery to remove and replace the shunt. After recovery he immediately perked up and smiled when he saw his mother. He remained hospitalized for 21 days.

In December, he returned to St. Louis Children’s Hospital with a dire bout of pneumonia. This time he was airlifted. He spent seven days in the hospital and left with a crushing edict from doctors: no more real food. All of DeAndre’s meals had been pureed and fed to him, but he apparently was aspirating mucus and food into his lungs when swallowing. Couple that with his immobility, which allows fluid to gather in his chest, and he’s at constant risk for pneumonia.

DeAndre now undergoes vest therapy four times a day. A compressor inside a vest he wears rhythmically inflates and deflates to promote movement and a clearing of his airways and lungs. His meals now consist of nutritional formula given through a feeding tube.

Formula. Similar to what we feed infants. It took one bullet to transform DeAndre from teen-aged boy to baby.

No one knows what the future holds for DeAndre, but his mother often thinks about what should have been — the driver’s license he was supposed to get this fall, the basketball and football games he would have played, the high school graduation he would have celebrated, the girls he would have dated. The life of a teen, not the dependency of an infant.

“He was shot so unjustly,” Yates said. “People don’t understand what a bullet does. It changes everything.”

Email IndyStar columnist Suzette Hackney at suzette.hackney@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter: @suzyscribe.

Case is still unsolved

DeAndre Knox was attending a house party in the 3400 block of Aylesford Lane near 38th Street and Guion Road on the city’s Northwestside when someone fired at least 20 shots into the home. DeAndre was shot in the head. Police have yet to arrest anyone in connection with the Feb. 1, 2014 shooting. Homicide investigators interviewed dozens of partygoers, but no one identified the shooter or shooters. Police said some parents were reluctant to allow their children to be questioned, and there were numerous uncooperative witnesses. There are no suspects in the shooting and it remains unsolved.

Anyone with information should call CrimeStoppers at (317) 262-8477 to report information anonymously or the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Section at (317) 327-3475.