Nine years ago, when Martrell Stevens was only five years old, he was a victim of gun violence that left him paralyzed from the waist down. But on Tuesday, he beat all the odds stacked against him and graduated as the valedictorian of his 8th grade class at Wadsworth STEM Elementary School in Chicago.
Even though many may see life paralyzed as a hinderance or curse, the 13-year-old said it’s nothing like that at all.
“It’s a blessing, it’s not a curse,” Martrell told CBS 2 Chicago.
He acknowledged it took him a while to reach that kind of understanding.
“Now I’m finally realizing it happened for a reason,” he said.
“That kind of humbled me, because when it happened, I was just a kid, but now I look on it now and I’m glad it happened,” he said.
His mother, Lakeesha Rucker, said she’s not surprised at her son’s attitude.
“That’s something that Martrell always say; God don’t make mistakes,” she said.
When Martrell couldn’t play on the school basketball team, he joined a wheelchair league.
“He’s a bright kid, keep a smile on his face, always positive. He’s my motivation,” Rucker said.
In the aftermath of the shooting nine years ago, Stevens was like a baby, needing to relearn tasks like tying his shoes, his mother said. The rehab was painful and frustrating. At first, Martrell thought his caregivers were torturing him and he didn’t understand why. Once he realized they were there to help, he got with the program, she said.
At that point, “mornings that I would be still asleep, Martrell would be rolling around, going into…
… the playroom,” said his mother, LaKeesha Rucker, who stayed with him for two months at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
Through it all, Martrell has wanted to do things on his own. “He doesn’t want you to help him out with nothing. Martrell is very independent,” Rucker said.
He was shot about 11:30 p.m. May 23, 2008, in the 6400 block of South Bishop Street. He was asleep in the front passenger seat of his mother’s car. She was putting her two other children — Lawilliam, 8, and Kamisha, 2 — in her truck with the help of a 10-year-old nephew.
Rucker heard a gunman yelling at her brother-in-law, Marcus Easton. Even when Easton said he didn’t know what the man was talking about, the gunman charged halfway across the street, shooting at him, she said. When the shooter heard Rucker scream, he opened fire on her.
Martrell was the only child hit, which his mother realized when she saw blood coming from his mouth. “He was [asleep]. He didn’t even know he was shot,” she said.
The bullet that struck Martrell ruptured arteries and veins, came within inches of his heart and spinal cord, broke bones in his back and exited his body, Rucker said. After he was transported to University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital, his lungs kept collapsing.
“You could always do what you put your mind to. If someone tells you you can’t do that, do it anyway, because you will never know if you don’t try,” he said.
Martrell will go to a private boarding school in Boston for high school. He received a full scholarship.
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