Road rage shooting leaves Atlanta man with life-altering injury
ATLANTA - Inside his Southwest Atlanta home, John Laster is ready to talk. And, he wants you to know, he is doing a lot better these days.
"I keep a positive mindset," he says. "I started a podcast, based off mental health. I have some great guests, we have great conversations, it's authentic. They talk about what has affected them, what's the most traumatic thing they went through."
But, this is the first time the 33-year-old has talked publicly about what he went through, what he lived through. What he *lived* through.
"I could not believe I was about to die from a gunshot to the arm, at 12:30 p.m. on a Wednesday," Laster says.
It was August 18, 2020, he was driving to pick up lunch at his favorite Decatur restaurant.
"I'm driving down I-20, get off the expressway," he remembers.
Laster stopped at a red light. It turned green, but he was distracted.
"And when I wasn't paying attention to the red light, the car behind me, which was was a truck, then blew its horn," he says.
This is Atlanta; people honk all the time. But this guy was not letting it go.
"I'm like, 'Is this really happening?' Laster says. "It was like, wow."
The other driving started trying to swerve around Laster's car.
What happened next still bewilders him.
"It was confusing because there was no interaction other than me not paying attention to the red light," he says. "There was no strong language used. There was no fingers pointed at each other. There was nothing."
At the next light, the truck driver pulled up into the opposite lane, right beside Laster's car.
That is when he saw the gun.
"As soon as I see the gun, I went like this," he says, lifting his left arm over his face. "Instantly, after I went like this, I was shot. I was hit in the arm, blood, glass, busts everywhere."
Everything went silent, and Laster says he went into "survival mode."
John Laster, 33, survived a road rage attack that left his left hand paralyzed..
He drove himself to a nearby gas station, asking some construction workers for help.
"It was, like, 'Get to where people are,'" Laster says. "Because. if I would have stayed where I was, I definitely would have died. That's how much blood I was losing."
Rushed by ambulance to Grady Memorial Hospital, Laster was taken into emergency surgery to try to stop the bleeding.
"I was shot in my left bicep, the bullet went through and through," he says. "It hit the brachial artery. Your arm has three nerves. He damaged two of those nerves. They took nerves out of my leg our of my leg right here, and put them into my arm."
The hope: with time and a lot of occupational and physical therapy, the transplanted nerves from his calf would reconnect and wake up his now paralyzed left hand.
Laster needed his left hand.
When he was two, he had three fingers on his right hand amputated after developing gangrene from a wound. He'd grown up doing everything with his left hand, which was now not moving.
"I always wanted to make people, prove to people, I can do it, I'm not handicapped," Laster says. "I can pick up a box, I can shoot basketball, I can do this. I'm not what you call me."
But the bullet, had done too much damage.
"It's been two years, and I still can't open my hand," he says, lifting up his left arm. "This is the result, is the claw hand. My hand cannot open up. That's what I'm dealing with. This is my weakest hand now. It definitely altered my life. I can't put on a belt. I can't tie my shoes. I need assistance with a lot of the things that I do, but I don't let it stop me. I try to do it first before I ask for help."
For months after he came home from the hospital, Laster was in deep depression. There were no witness to the shooting, no suspect, and no one has ever been charged.
"That had a lot to do with my depression, not knowing who did it," he says.
Today, Laster is working again, as a music manager.
He sometimes fantasizes about what he would ask the man who shot him, if he could get him on his podcast.
"Like, 'what were you going through that day, why such rage in such little time, just like that, you know what I mean?'" Laster says. "But, the best thing I did out of this situation is forgave the person who shot me."
Letting go is helping John Laster take back control of his story.
"If I was to be bitter and broken, it would give the person who shot me energy over me," he says. "That's how I look at it."