THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 22, 1995 TAG: 9504220290
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
One Sunday night two years ago, Old Dominion University student Chris Pearson barely eluded death after being shot in the neck outside a bank on Hampton Boulevard.
On Friday afternoon, Pearson, now 22, celebrated a new political life, lifting his girlfriend outside Webb Center. He had just learned he had been elected student body president.
The election sealed Pearson's transformation from victim to activist, but he doesn't forget his past. He campaigned, in part, to improve safety on campus, and he says his experience will empower him in other areas, as well.
``I think this will give me a stronger drive to really get something done,'' Pearson said, sitting outside Webb Center. ``I know what I could have lost, and this is a second chance.
``I feel you've got to make the best of what you've got, and I'm making the most of my life.''
Pearson said he would like to see emergency lights and phones every 50 yards on campus (``If you're attacked, you don't want to run around campus to get help.'') and more safety information distributed to students (``They need to know what's going on around campus to better prepare themselves.'').
He also wants to get the Student Senate better-connected to students. He knows there is apathy. Pearson defeated David Dilts, 316-217. Only 3 percent of the student body voted.
Pearson, a broad blond guy wearing a blue polo shirt and white shorts, appears to be a happy-go-lucky college student . . . until he lifts his head. There, underneath his Adam's apple, is an inch-long purplish scar.
It happened in January 1993.
He was depositing money at an automated teller machine at 38th Street and Hampton Boulevard when three teenagers approached him.
``One guy put a gun to my head,'' Pearson recalled. ``He said, `Give me your money.' I said, `Come on, man. I'm just making a deposit.' And then he shot me.''
The bullet went through the left side of his neck, pierced his esophagus and came out the other side.
``They said it missed my carotid artery by a millimeter,'' Pearson said. ``If it had hit the carotid, I would have been DOA in five minutes.''
He didn't lose any functions, but he says he feels a constant discomfort. ``It feels like someone has a light grip on my throat.''
He spent a week at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and then nearly a year at his parents' home in McLean, recuperating physically and emotionally.
``What it really did was break you down. At one moment, you feel content and safe in your surroundings. At the next moment, you feel worthless. It's almost humiliating.''
He had first wanted to escape ODU and Norfolk. But at home, he decided to return. ``You're not robbed of your money; you're robbed of your sense of security. And it's not something you regain when you enter a different area. I started here; I wanted to finish here. That was really important to me.''
Pearson, a former president of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, will graduate in spring 1996 with a double major in marketing and management information systems.
He hopes to get an M.B.A. at Old Dominion and go into advertising or marketing.
He knows he wasn't the only victim at ODU. Or the last.
Sara Wisnosky was murdered in September 1993.
Michael Chasteen was shot in both legs last month.
Each time, Pearson winces and remembers. Others do, too, but he says it is different for them.
``Everybody stops going out at night for a month or two, and then they forget about it.''
He wants to change that. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Chris Pearson
KEYWORDS: SHOOTING ASSAULT CRIME VICTIM by CNB