Martin Hana doesn’t remember much about the moment he was shot in the face by a stranger outside an El Cajon In-N-Out restaurant.
“When I tried to leave, all I remember is I got shot,” Hana said from his hospital bed.
Three weeks after he suffered a bullet to the jaw, Hana has just been able to regain the ability to speak and wanted to thank the public for their prayers.
With an apparatus holding together his right jaw and tubes connecting him to life supporting machines the 23-year-old spoke from his bed at Sharp Memorial Hospital, trying his best to talk about the day he almost lost his life.
Hana stopped at the restaurant to order food around 5 p.m. He remembers getting into his car and rolling down the window.
Before he could start the engine, he says he says he was ambushed, shot in the face by a man he never saw coming.
“He hit me right away. I don’t have any idea who this guy is,” Hana said.
“I didn’t see his face.”
Local
Hana was the first victim in a crime spree Aug. 6 that ended in the shooting death of a San Diego police officer.
Officer Jeremy Henwood, a Marine reservist who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was shot and killed sitting in his patrol car in City Heights.
The shooter who attacked both Henwood and Hana was Dejon Marquee White. The 23-year old suspect died that same evening in a shootout with police.
Investigators have not identified a motive in either shooting.
Hana has had dozens of surgeries in the 20 days he’s been hospitalized yet, he says he has no anger towards the man responsible, only questions.
“I will forgive him and will ask God to forgive him too,” he said.
A member of San Diego's Chaldean-American community, Hana gives language training to U.S. troops headed for Iraq.
Hana is also a professional musician, who performs along with his father, in addition to his work as an interpreter for military language training classes.
