By LARRY McSHANE
Associated Press Writer
MALVERNE, N.Y.- The bullet tore into the left side of his neck, followed quickly by another to his wrist and a third that lodged behind his right eye. It was the first shot, the one that entered above the dangling police badge, that changed his life forever.
The .22-caliber bullet splintered as it struck Officer Steven McDonald, the fragments piercing his spinal column. McDonald, 29, collapsed as the gunshots resonated across Central Park on that lazy summer afternoon. His pistol never left its holster.
His assailant, a 15-year-old whose serene nickname - “Buddha” - belied a violent past, sprinted away from the bleeding McDonald. The wounded officer’s partner ran toward him - but slipped in the mud, skidding to a halt alongside the second-year cop.
McDonald’s face was covered with blood. His partner saw McDonald’s tongue wagging. Nothing else on Steven McDonald’s body was moving at all.
It was 4:15 p.m. on July 12, 1986. Steven McDonald, his spinal cord damaged between the second and third vertebrae, would never take another step. But his life’s journey was just beginning.
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On another July afternoon 20 years later, McDonald sits in the living room of his Long Island home. Around his neck is a medal of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, collected on a trip to Lourdes. He sits in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down, his breathing done by a machine.
Across the last 18 years, McDonald has become one of the world’s foremost pilgrims for peace. He’s taken his message of forgiveness to Israel, to Northern Ireland and most recently to Bosnia.
But those were unusual moments for McDonald, whose work is more often done in the obscurity of a high school auditorium or a gym. Most days, he’s lifted into a modified van that delivers him to hundreds of appearances each year. In May, he spoke at Stamford High School, where a 19-year-old died in a gang shooting four months earlier.
The victim, like most in McDonald’s audiences, was born after that day in Central Park.
Over and over, like a one-man tape loop, McDonald relives the experience: spotting bicycle thief Shavod “Buddha” Jones and two other teens. Moving to frisk one suspect. Three rapid explosions. The vision of his wife, pregnant with their first child, as consciousness disappeared.
The story always concludes with the same unlikely ending: What happened on that day was nothing less than God’s will, intended to turn Steven McDonald into a messenger of God’s word.
“All the evilness that played out that afternoon 20 years ago, so much good has come from that,” McDonald says in his home, his eyes bright and his voice full of conviction. “And that’s God’s plan, you know? To bring the good out of a bad situation.
“The good out of the evil.”
McDonald’s voice is punctuated by the low “whoosh” of the respirator that keeps him alive - the soundtrack of his life, replacing his long-dormant lungs. Despite his severe injuries, McDonald maintains a dizzying schedule of appearances, lectures, travels.
“He exhausts me sometimes,” said Detective Ed Lenihan, who accompanies McDonald in the van.
In the first years after the shooting, McDonald drew attention like a rock star. He met with Pope John Paul II and Nelson Mandela, sat for an interview with Barbara Walters. He did the Letterman show, and co-authored a book with his wife, Patti Ann.
The television cameras and media attention have disappeared, even as McDonald’s commitment has endured.
McDonald, officially an NYPD detective on sick leave, wears a blue golf shirt, sweat pants and black sneakers. His hands and feet are fastened into his wheelchair, which he operates by breathing into two tubes placed at mouth level. His hair is graying, his sideburns neatly trimmed.
When McDonald speaks about Jones, he sometimes uses only the shooter’s first name, Shavod - like he’s referring to an old friend. And in some strange way they remain connected by their single meeting, those scant seconds in the middle of Manhattan.
When McDonald was shot, his wife was three months pregnant with their only son, Conor. On March 1, 1987, the day of his son’s baptism, McDonald had his wife read a statement about his feelings toward the teen who crippled him.
There was no anger. McDonald remembered what Cardinal John O’Connor had said months earlier, that Jesus Christ only saved the world once he was motionless on the cross. McDonald, who had struggled with finding his new niche in life, knew what he had to say.
“I forgive him,” said Patti Ann, reciting her husband’s words, “and hope he can find peace and purpose in his life.”
McDonald has never wavered from his stance, which stunned many, particularly those in the “us against them” world of police work. Forgive your would-be killer, who denied you the chance to hold your wife, to play catch with your son?
But McDonald’s belief has never wavered, and his calling remains stronger than ever.
“If it was left to me, the whole thing would have died a quick death,” McDonald said of his spiritual reincarnation. “But God said, `You’re not going to sit around and do nothing. You’re going to share this story.’”
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And so McDonald started his endless tour, relentlessly retelling his story to anyone who would listen. He traveled to Lourdes with a group of disabled teens. He went to Belfast in 1998 with Father Mychal Judge, the fire department chaplain who became a family friend.
His message touched the well known and the unknown. Former Mayor Ed Koch, who met McDonald in Bellevue Hospital, sees him each year at midnight Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“I go over and kiss his brow,” Koch said. “I don’t know if it makes him feel good, but it makes me feel good.”
And there’s the Queens schoolgirl whose cousin, wife and children died in an arson fire. The girl’s heart was filled with hate. McDonald spoke at her school, spoke to her heart.
“What you said touched me so hard,” the girl wrote, “that I forgave the person who killed my family.”
McDonald, whose family was told he wouldn’t survive the afternoon of his shooting, will celebrate his son’s 20th birthday this year. His doctors say McDonald has far outpaced their hopes for his survival.
But many others in his life are gone. Cardinal O’Connor died in May 2000. Mychal Judge died in the shadow of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Over 20 years, 86 other members of the NYPD were killed in the line of duty. McDonald attended many of their funerals.
And Shavod “Buddha” Jones died in a motorcycle accident in September 1995, just days after his release from prison. He left without fulfilling one of McDonald’s dreams: that Buddha would join him in the van, creating an unlikely tag team with a mutual message of peace.
Instead, McDonald will continue his solo work and enjoy the few pleasures afforded by his condition, like the feel of sunshine on his face.
“I have my days when I’m not feeling well - emotionally, physically, spiritually,” he said. “But it’s been a very, very active life.”
A life that took an extraordinary turn on July 12, 1986 - a day he looks back upon with regret, and with thanks.