A Black man in Phoenix is in the hospital and seeking help after he was shot nine times by a group of Hispanic teens he asked to not use the N-word.
The victim, identified on his GoFundMe page as CT, survived the September attack, his father reported on Facebook.
“Thank God for my son’s life,” Chea Tardey said in the post. “We need your prayers and support.”
CT works as a photographer and was taking landscape photos and live-streaming the experience on Facebook Sept. 12 when three young men approached him asking him to take their photo, according to Fox 10.
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After taking a few photos of the young men, they asked if he would charge them, to which he replied,
“Nah, I ain’t gonna charge you,” the news station reported.
The three responded by calling CT a racial slur, Fox reports.
“My man, I told you you can’t say the n-word. You’re not black,” CT responded.
But the theee reportedly continued using the slur.
“I say what the [expletive] I want,” one of the suspects said, according to Fox.
CT responded,
“No, you cannot. Not in front of me.”
The confrontation soon escalated with CT heard on video saying,
“Didn’t I tell you don’t say the n-word? Didn’t I say that?”
What happens next remains unclear but five shots could be heard going off. CT then called 911.
“Hey I just got shot,” he said in the video. “I’m at Encanto Park. Please help me.”
CT later told Fox the prayers he said after being shot.
“While I was on the ground I was just praying and asking God not now,” he said. “I was just saying not now, not … not now.”
The men left the camera behind and fled the scene. Police were able to identify the suspects using the photos CT took of them, ABC 15 reports. Ricardo Mendoza-Sanchez and Angel Ortega Romero, both 18, were arrested, along with an unidentified 17-year-old boy.
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Police told ABC 15 that two of the suspects had handguns on them when they were arrested. No hate crime charges were filed. Instead the teens were charged with aggravated assault and street gang activity.
CT, who was left with a bullet in his shoulder, told Fox 10 that he wants the teens to get charged with attempted murder.
“It was two people that shot me and they shot me nine times,” he said. “So how can you call that aggravated assault? Like, what was aggravated? Like, they tried to kill me.”
He called his survival a miracle, Fox reported.
“Oh yeah, it’s a complete miracle,” he said. “That’s a blessing, ’cause lot of people have been shot only one time and they didn’t even survive.”
