Crowders Mountain man says he was shot shielding his daughter

In the seconds before he was shot, Jamie White saw a man point a revolver at his 6-year-old daughter, Kinsley.

He acted, moving to the left to shield Kinsley.

"I just ran towards my daughter," White said. "That's when he shot me."

White arrived home from Carolinas Medical Center at around 8 p.m. Saturday evening. On Monday morning, every movement, even deep breaths, brought him pain.

But White is alive to feel that pain, and he is grateful for that fact, despite the long road to recovery ahead of him.

Speaking in an interview outside his home in Crowders Mountain, White recounted the shooting, which stemmed from a conflict with his then-neighbor, Robert Louis Singletary, over a basketball that rolled into Singletary's yard.

Singetary is accused of shooting and wounding three people on April 18: Jamie White, his wife, Ashley Hilderbrand, and Kinsley, who was wounded by bullet fragments that lodged in her cheek.

The three of them were shot on what, in many ways, was a normal spring evening. Jamie White was grilling steaks outside, and Kinsley was playing with a group of neighborhood children down the street.

The first sign of trouble came when the basketball rolled into Singletary's yard, according to White who said Singletary confronted other neighbors about it.

"It looked like a normal conversation," White said.

Singetary walked into his home and came out with a gun, according to White.

"He comes back out the door running, firing at that man and his kids," White said. "At that point, I took off. My youngin' was down the road too. My little girl and about 10, 12 other kids were down there. They were all stunned. It was the first time they had ever seen anything like that."

White ran down the road, telling the children to come with him. Singletary approached White, who told him there were too many children outside for him to be shooting, White said.

"I said, 'Man, that's crazy.' And he said, "You white? I don't even like white people. I'm going to shoot your a--," White said.

White said that Singetary dropped the gun he was holding and grabbed another, then ran across the road and started firing at White and Kinsley.

"He fires three shots. He hasn't hit nobody yet. So I turn around and look… My daughter's right in front of me. I look and see, and he's pointing straight at my daughter," he said. "And I just run towards my daughter… and that's when he got me."

White fell to the ground. The bullet had punctured one of his lungs and his liver, coming out through his belly. The shrapnel lodged in Kinsley's cheek.

Singetary pulled the trigger another three times and missed, White said.

"I was worried about my babies," White said. "I was already hit. I was losing breath. I was on fire. I honestly didn't think I was going to make it."

White said that police arrived faster than he thought they would, but paramedics were waiting on police to secure the scene. White told the police officers that if they didn't get him help, he was going to die, and several police officers picked White up and carried him to an ambulance.

From there, White remembers bits and pieces of what happened next. He was flown from CaroMont Regional Medical Center to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. He said that as he was being transported, medical workers tried to keep him awake.

In the hospital, he asked for more oxygen, and he was able to speak to his parents and to detectives.

White is not active on social media, but he saw news of the shooting on TV, and as word spread, the story, which was largely focused on Kinsley, made international news, becoming part of a much broader conversation about gun violence in the United States.

For his part, he was angry when he learned that Singletary had been released from jail on an unsecured bond after an alleged assault in December, when he was accused of beating his girlfriend with a miniature sledgehammer and holding her captive.

"None of this would have happened if the judicial system would have done their job," White said.

When White arrived home from the hospital, his four children, including Kinsley, were waiting on him.

"She's in very good spirits," White said. "Poor baby, she's constantly worried about me. She comes and checks on me every 15 minutes."

The neighborhood on Monday morning was quiet. Outside White's family home, there was sidewalk chalk on the ground, and a child had chalked a hopscotch pattern onto the pavement of the driveway. Three bicycles lay haphazardly in the yard. Birds chirped as a small plane droned overhead. The police tape was gone.

But White has been permanently altered by the experience. There are bullet fragments still lodged inside him. A supervisor at a chemical cleaning company, White has been out of work since he was shot, and he is expected to be home for three more weeks as he heals. There's a bullet hole in their patio roof, a visible reminder of the almost deadly encounter.

"It's still a real open wound," he said. "They told me it's going to be a long, slow road to recovery."

Singletary was later arrested in Florida where he awaits extradition.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Crowders Mountain man says he was shot shielding his daughter