MILWAUKEE — A teenager is speaking out after he says he was shot on Water Street after the Bucks game in Milwaukee Friday night.
Dashun James is 18 years old and a senior at Bradley Tech High School.
He returned home from the hospital Monday after being shot in the hip. He said the bullet is still there, and says it may have to stay there. It feels like an eight on a pain scale of one through 10.
Milwaukee Police say 21 people were shot in the entertainment district Friday night, and 17 were shot on Water Street. That's where police recovered nine guns and took 10 people into custody.
James says he was hanging out with friends and family Friday night. They were watching the game. Towards the end, he said he was heading back to his car, which was parked near Swing Park.
That's when James says he fell to the ground near Water and Juneau Streets.
"I thought I got grazed, but then I tried to get up again while they was still trying to shoot," James said. "But I couldn't. My leg just felt numb."
He said it happened so fast, it seemed impossible to run.
"We see some girls running in front of us, and we turned around, and the guns were already in the air and shooting," James said. "So, we really couldn't run fast enough. We were already in the midst of it."
James said he didn't get a good picture of who may have been shooting. He noted some had a mask on.
An officer ran over to help James with his wound.
"He came to the hospital with me and stayed with me for hours and made sure I was okay, make sure I had things to drink," James said.
He is still in disbelief. James says he is set to go to college in Michigan and play basketball, and must tell his coach about his injury.
"I thought it was going to be a regular day," James said. "We were just going to watch the game and go home."
The Milwaukee Police Association Vice President Alex Ayala says MPD had as many officers out that night as they could, and the violence is really taking a toll on the force.
"I plead to the mayor and the Common Council, we need more officers," Ayala said. "They have to put the cases together, interview the victims, take the cases to the district attorney's office, go to the trial. So this is the beginning of a long process we don't have the staffing for."
He said the Milwaukee Police Department is short about 50 detectives, 400 officers and 12 forensic investigators.
