SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash — A Spokane 19-year-old is learning how to walk again after he was paralyzed when police say two teenagers shot him during a vape pen robbery in mid-October.
Now out of the hospital, Steven Leblanc is telling his story for the very first time.
"I leaned my head onto the steering wheel. I thought I was going to die, I thought it was over," said Leblanc. "I knew I was shot, I knew I was bleeding."
He was shot while driving away from the suspects, but as soon as he felt the bullet, he lost feeling in his legs.
"I felt like I was floating, like I thought I was going to heaven," he added. "But, real quick, reality clicked in."
With his foot still on the gas pedal and suddenly unable to breathe, he called 911. He grabbed his motionless legs and threw them off the pedal. A biker saw him and ran to get help and medical attention.
"I got shot in my upper left shoulder, and it went and ricocheted through and pierced my lungs," he said while pointing out the trajectory of the bullet. "It missed my heart by [a] millimeter and went down and hit my lower T9 vertebrae and blew it up."
It may sound like a miracle that Leblanc survived, and he agreed.
"Yeah, it is honestly," he said. "The exact words I heard when the bullet went in my back, was literally, it felt like someone speaking 'Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name'."
After a few agonizing days in the hospital, Leblanc started regaining movement in his feet. He then regained feeling in his whole right leg, and now, his left toes.
He is not able to feel when they move, but it is a great start and a great sign.
"There is a good chance, but there also is a very slight chance [the feeling] might not ever come back," he said. "Life, it's going to be difficult."
The physical aspect is one part of the problem, while the other is mental, he said.
"I hated being alone and some nights, it was super depressing," he said about staying in the hospital. "I would sit there and cry for hours."
He would remember his best friends, but thinking about the times they had together sometimes made it worse.
"I miss the days I used to do double backflips off the cliff or the days I was on their rope swing, that I will never be able to do again," he said. "Or work."
He worked in construction before getting shot. His boss said he can still come back to work in his wheelchair, which Leblanc smiled at.
"I'm really happy that it is getting better, at least. I didn't die because that bullet missed my heart by a very small chance," he said. "I'm just glad that I got a second chance at life."
He still has a long road ahead of him for rehabilitation, plus medical bills and costs of new wheelchair-accessible living spaces. His family has put together a GoFundMe called Strength for Steven Ray to help.
He could not talk about the events that led up to the shooting or the alleged suspects, as the trial is next month.
Court records that both suspects are still in custody, however, a judge reduced the bond for the alleged shooter, Logan Birrell, from $250,000 to $100,000. Both Birrell and suspect Tobias Hamm have pleaded not guilty.