A year later, survivor of Wilkinsburg massacre is determined to walk again
John Ellis didn't feel the first gunshot.
He had been drinking — it was a barbecue, after all, he said.
He was sitting down, though he says he can't remember that, either.
He didn't feel the first gunshot, but he heard it. He felt the second one.
"I got up and started running toward my house," he said.
Ellis hasn't lived in his house on Franklin Avenue in Wilkinsburg for a year, since the night two gunmen opened fire on a backyard barbecue, killing five people and an unborn child, and wounding three others. Among the injured was Ellis, who remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Brittany Powell, 27, lived at the Franklin Avenue home where the shooting took place March 9, 2016. The unseasonably warm weather prompted her family to gather for a cookout. They invited friends and neighbors, like Ellis.
He was hanging out, eating hamburgers and hot dogs. The next thing he remembered was being at the hospital, where he remained for two months. When he awoke, he said, he remembered his mother's face — and the tracheotomy tube.
"It was annoying trying to write everything instead of talk," he said from his parents' home Wednesday in Elliott. "I was there March till May. My mom told the nurses, 'When he gets to talking, you all are in trouble.' "
Aleta Livsey cries when she talks about her son's struggles. She cries when he talks about them. And she cries when he describes the night of the shooting.
"He's always getting on me, saying, 'Mom, stop crying,'" she said Thursday. "He calls me a crybaby."
He makes her laugh incessantly, she said, and he keeps her upbeat and positive. His optimism is stunning, she said.
"We have a good time," she said. "He's still John."
Police: Calculated execution
Ellis and more than a dozen others were crammed into the fenced-in backyard shortly before 11 p.m. that night. None saw Cheron Shelton or Robert Thomas lurking in the shadows.
Thomas, police said, took aim from an alley behind the house and fired a .40-caliber handgun into the crowd, sending them running toward the safety of the back porch and back door. Shelton, lying in wait in a small walkway adjacent to the house, then opened fire with an AK-47-style semi-automatic weapon, authorities said.
Investigators called the ambush a calculated execution, one in which Thomas' role was to drive the crowd into Shelton's line of sight. Four of the five dead adults were found in a pile on the porch; all five had been shot in the head.
In all, about 50 shots were fired, police said. Shelton, who is not related to the Powell/Shelton family, is accused of firing the shots that killed siblings Brittany Powell, Jerry Michael Shelton, 35, and Chanetta Powell, 25, and her unborn child, Demetrius; their cousin, Tina Shelton, 37; and family friend Shada Mahone, 26.
Police arrested Cheron Shelton, 30, and Thomas, 28, on June 23 in a case built on phone records for yet-to-be-found cell phones, security footage, written and pantomimed messages and a jailhouse snitch. The firearms used in the shooting have not been recovered.
The Allegheny County District Attorney's office painted Cheron Shelton as a man bent on revenge, believing that LaMont Powell was responsible for the 2013 murder of his friend, Calvin Doswell. That case remains unsolved. Police have noted that LaMont Powell has not cooperated with the investigation despite losing five family members and a close friend.
Cheron Shelton and Thomas have been in jail since they were arrested. Their trial is set to begin May 3.
"I watch the news — I'm a news person," Ellis said. "Seeing stuff like this on the news, I'd never think it would happen to me.
"I wasn't into all that gang violence. I'm a music person. I can have me a radio station on all day in my room and not bother nobody. I didn't hang out in a lot of crowds."
'I'm going to get up and walk'
These days, Ellis said, he's doing well.
"I was sick during the summer, but now I'm up and moving around and eating," he said. "I'm getting my weight back up, and I'm glad. My little 7-year-old niece — we were about the same size for a while."
He's in a good spirits, he said. But not always.
"I still think about the incident every now and then," he said. "I talk about it once in a while. ... I get angry at times — I do, I really do. They stopped me from doing a lot of stuff I used to do."
He blames himself at times. A friend in Homewood had been texting him to come over on the night of the shooting. She kept telling him to hurry up, and, for that very reason, he said he decided he would take his time leaving the barbecue.
He said his mother blames herself sometimes, too.
His washer and dryer were broken at the time, so he had been doing laundry at his mother's house. He wanted to take it over that day, but his mother, he said, "didn't feel like it."
"I could have been over there washing clothes. I probably would have stayed the night," he said. "My mom, she feels kind of bad."
He died the night of the shooting, Livsey said.
"It was after 3 a.m., and the doctor walked out and told me, 'We brought him back,'" Livsey said. "I said, 'What do you mean you brought him back?'"
He almost died again during the summer because of an allergic reaction to medication during surgery, Livsey said.
Ellis said he wants to attend the Thursday night vigil in front of the Franklin Avenue home. But he won't.
"I don't know who in those dude's families are still trying to get at (Brittany's) brother," he said. "As bad as I want to, I just don't feel like going through that again. I don't want them to think I'm scared to be back where I live, but I have a kid, I have a 24-year-old son ..."
His voice trailed off.
"I survived, so I'm not trying to jeopardize my life being at a vigil."
He said his family is what has kept him going.
"I got support," he said. "My father ... he's been trying to motivate me. He puts my weights in front of me, says, 'No more being lazy.' And I have been being lazy. I'm starting to get out of bed more. I'm not feeling so weak no more."
He said he hopes to get back into his own home at some point.
He has hopes of walking again.
"I'm a grown man. I can't stay at mom and daddy's all my life. I'll be 48 next week," he said. "I'm not so used to being around them that much. Now I'm getting on their nerves."
"No, you're not," his mother countered.
For now, Ellis said he is motivated.
He said his legs move. They just do it on their own time. He said the doctors said that's because of nerve damage, but the fact his legs can move is a good sign.
"One day, I'm going to beat them upstairs," he said, adding that he one day plans to surprise his parents with breakfast because he walked up the stairs on his own. "I'm (going to) be out of this bed — this time next year."
