Gang shooting victim Bryshon Nellum overcomes obstacles in race to London Olympics
23-year-old Bryshon Nellum has survived and recovered from a gang shooting in 2008 and now in 2012 he heads to the London Olympics...
Twenty-three year-old Bryshon Nellum has survived and recovered from a gang shooting in 2008 and now in 2012 he heads to the 2012 London Olympic Games. The Long Beach, California native, will run in the 400m race for the U.S.A. NBC Olympics reports:
Bryshon Nellum had the world at his feet. More accurately he had the world at his legs, which carried him to a record-setting track career at Long Beach Poly High School and to the cusp of collegiate stardom.
But all was nearly lost in an instant of senseless violence in the early morning hours of Halloween in 2008. Nellum was walking home from a party on 29th Street and Vermont Avenue near the USC campus when a car pulled alongside him, a gang slogan was yelled out, and he was shot in the legs.
The shotgun blast hit Nellum once in each thigh and in his right hamstring. At that moment he wasn’t thinking about saving his track career. He thought about saving his life.
“I never really fell to the ground,” Nellum recalled. “I hopped up and down on one leg to get away and to get to safety.”
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