Local school, community rally around 15-year-old shooting victim
While his peers were in sports practices and after-school activities at Hozho Academy, just miles away, Liam Donaldson was going out on an evening walk, something he does quite often. However, his walk on Aug. 15 took a different turn.
Liam left his mom’s house around 7 pm and told her he’d be back around 7:45 pm. His mom Vikki Garcia told him that their dinner - meatloaf and mashed potatoes - would be ready when he got home. But Liam didn’t make it home that night.
Instead, Garcia received a call around 7:30 pm: It was the Gallup Police. Liam had been shot and was currently in the emergency room. The officer on the line told Garcia that Liam was awake and talking. As a nurse, Garcia took that as a good sign.
“I think I was not as alarmed as I could’ve been because [the officer] did say he was alert and that he was talking,” Garcia said.
She immediately hung up the phone and drove to the hospital to see her son. Liam was flown to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque within an hour of the shooting.
Liam had been shot in the stomach, and the single bullet had put a hole in his ascending colon. Human colons have three main parts to them: the ascending colon, the transverse colon, and the descending colon. The ascending colon is the starting point of the colon, and it’s located on the right side of the abdomen. It extends upward to the hepatic flexure, which is a bend in the colon.
The docotors had to cut Liam open from his sternum to his pelvis to perform an exploratory surgery to find out what had all been affected. They eventually learned that only his ascending colon had been damaged.
Doctors removed Liam’s entire ascending colon and connected his transverse colon to his small intestine. Garcia said he didn’t need a colostomy bag.
ROAD TO RECOVERY
Garcia said Liam has been recovering quite well. He was discharged from the hospital after only five days.
“He’s doing amazing,” Garcia said. “I don’t know how he’s done as well as he has. He’s sleeping a lot, but I think that’s just his body trying to recover from all of this.”
Garcia said she wasn’t sure what Liam’s life would look like after all this or what medical problems he might face in the future.
“I’m not sure [if he’s going to live a normal life after this],” the concerned mother said. “I wonder if there’s going to be digestive issues in the future. The doctors haven’t really said anything about that, but I think there potentially could be Crohn's disease or something like that. But right now, everything is functioning normally.”
As for Liam, he’s trying to get back to his normal life.
“It’s been more or less kind of strange, [this experience],” he said. “I’m not used to being in the hospital for that long. [Now,] I’m just trying to get on with life as normal.”
Liam walks with a cane right now due to some leg pain. He also can’t jump right back into the activities he enjoys — he’s an avid rodeo participant.
He also enjoys carpentry and is teaching himself how to play the banjo and speak German.
Football season is out of the question for now, but he’s hoping he’ll be able to rejoin the team during his junior year.
INCIDENT TIMELINE
According to a Gallup Police Department press release published on Aug. 20, Gallup Police Officer Gilbert Gonzales responded to the area of South Second Street and Logan Avenue after Liam reportedly called 911 himself. The shooting took place on a dirt trail along the Rio Puerco, which is a drainage canal that runs along Second Street.
Liam said he didn’t initially see the man who shot him. He only noticed that there were other people around when he heard one of the two men exclaim “Oh, f***.” Liam turned around at the sound of the man’s voice, and then he heard a gunshot.
“My first thought was that they were shooting at each other, and then I saw the gun was pointed at me,” Liam said. “I didn’t realize they’d shot me, I thought they’d shot at me and missed.”
But he soon realized they hadn’t missed when he went to touch his stomach, and his hand came away bloody.
Liam described the man who shot him as a “lanky” Caucasian with a red goatee. He was reportedly wearing sweatpants and a black hooded sweatshirt. The second man was reportedly wearing a blue hoodie, and Liam believes he may have been either Native American or Hispanic.
The two men immediately left the scene after the alleged gunman shot Liam.
Garcia said she believes Liam accidentally walked into the middle of a drug deal. He was only 20 feet away from the men when he was shot.
“I think that the guy thought that Liam saw something that he shouldn’t have, which he didn’t,” Garcia said.
COMMUNITY RALLIES AROUND VICTIM
For a while, the public was left in the dark about what happened to Liam. The Gallup Police did not release an initial statement about the shooting. Most people probably didn’t even know about it until Hozho Academy Principal Juliane Hillock sent out a letter to families of the school on Aug. 19, alerting them to the situation.
In her letter, Hillock discussed how Hozho staff and students, and even herself, have been victims of crimes in the area.
“This has been concerning, but now that one of our students has been shot in broad daylight while simply walking our streets, we can no longer wait to address safety in our community,” Hillock said. “These individuals have not been apprehended and the community has not been notified of the danger. We, as community members, need to ask our community leaders to address the issue of crime and safety.”
GPD posted a statement on social media a day after Hillock’s letter was published, providing information about where the shooting took place and descriptions of the suspects.
In an interview with the Sun, Hillock voiced her concerns about how local law enforcement alerts the public when crimes occur. She said that it’s often too late.
“There are these terrible crimes happening, and the public is unaware, and we don’t know how to protect ourselves or contribute to fixing the problem because we’re not even aware that the problem happened,” she said.
Hillock wondered how many crimes go unreported in Gallup.
BRINGING ATTENTION TO THE MATTER
She called for a town hall meeting where the public would have a chance to discuss their public safety concerns. The town hall was held at Hozho Academy on Aug. 22 at 6:30 pm.
The Gallup City Council and Police Chief Erin Toadlena-Pablo sat on a panel during the meeting while people voiced their concerns.
Garcia said many people used the platform to mention their own experiences with violence in the community, and that the local officials couldn’t provide a lot of answers, in her opinion.
“I just feel like there weren’t really any answers to any of the questions people were asking,” she said. “It almost felt like everyone was like ‘OK well it’s drugs, it’s alcohol, it’s gun violence.’ Personally, I think all of them go hand in hand.”
Besides the town hall, Hozho Academy also held a candlelight vigil on Aug. 27 outside of Gallup City Hall during the regular City Council meeting. Hillock said the vigil wasn’t just for Liam, but rather for all community members who have been victims of violence. She also said the school plans on holding future events to discuss violence in the community.
“Gallup is a lovely place. It’s got great people, but we have a problem, and we need to fix it,” Hillock said.
Of course, the school’s efforts didn’t automatically fix Gallup’s problem. In fact, during the Aug. 22 town hall, another Hozho Academy student was sexually assaulted on a dirt trail near the school. The attack happened around 4:30 pm. At press time, there were no further updates on the situation.
Hillock said she and the rest of the staff at Hozho Academy will be brainstorming some ideas on how to keep their students safe.
“We need to figure out how to protect the other students that go here, and students that don’t go here,” she said. “We just want our community to be a safe one for families and children. Whatever I can think of, whatever we can come up with, we will do.”
WHERE LIAM’S CASE STANDS NOW
Garcia took the town hall as an opportunity to address Toadlena-Pablo and ask her some questions about Liam’s case. She said she hadn’t received any updates on the case since the shooting occurred.
She also voiced concerns related to the fact that the GPD didn’t post anything about the shooting online until five days later, and after Hozho Academy posted something.
A representative from the GPD addressed Garcia’s concerns by saying that the GPD’s policy is to not post anything on social media during an ongoing investigation. This is reportedly done so that anyone involved in the case doesn’t get tipped off and make a run for it, leaving an arrest almost impossible.
But there are exceptions, such as when there’s an immediate public safety concern. The representative gave the July 26 Rio West Mall shooting as an example.
When Garcia confronted Toadlena-Pablo about why it took the GPD five days to post about the shooting on social media, Toadlena-Pablo became defensive. She told Garcia that the GPD had been trying to reach her to discuss the shooting.
Garcia spoke out against this statement, saying that she’d been in the hospital with Liam for the past five days, and that she hadn’t received a single call from the GPD.
After this statement from Garcia, Toadlena-Pablo asked her to continue their conversation outside of the public forum.
“She absolutely avoided my questions,” Garcia said. “She didn’t answer any of them. So, I went up to her after the meeting and said ‘Chief Toadlena-Pablo, I want to meet with you tomorrow.’”
Garcia said Toadlena-Pablo assured her that she’d be at her desk all day, ready to take her call.
But that Friday came and went, and Garcia said she called the police chief six times that day and left three voicemails. Toadlena-Pablo finally did get back to her around 4:30 pm that day, apologizing and saying that she’d been working I.T. all day. The two women decided to meet the following Monday.
They finally met on Aug. 26. Garcia said Toadlena-Pablo told her that the GPD was still in the early stages of the case. They were currently in the middle of pulling Ring camera footage from the neighborhoods near where the shooting happened to see if there was any footage of the suspects either arriving or leaving the area.
Officers were also returning to the scene of the crime to try and locate the bullet casing so that they could determine what type of gun Liam was shot with. However, the area in question is full of foliage, so that may prove to be a difficult task.
The Sun reached out to Toadlena-Pablo via email and phone multiple times to receive an update on the case, but she did not respond by press time.
THE FACE OF A MOVEMENT
Although violence in Gallup isn’t something new, what happened to Liam has rallied people around the idea of finding solutions to the problem.
Hozho Academy’s public town hall and candlelight vigil created opportunities for people to speak up about the violence in the community. And people have attended recent city council meetings, asking the council to step up and take action.
During the Aug. 13 city council meeting, two days before Liam was shot, Mayor Louie Bonaguidi and the councilors pledged to hold a work session to discuss the violence in the community. A date for that public work session has not been set yet.
But people are talking anyway.
Garcia said she believes God may have put her son on this Earth to help the people of Gallup find a solution to the violence.
“I truly think that God chose Liam for this,” the proud mother said. “Things like this have happened in Gallup before, and there’s never been this much publicity and light brought to a situation.”
Liam himself called all the attention he’s been getting the last couple of weeks “strange.”
“I’m not a big person for attention; I don’t really like it,” he said. “For me to be kind of the face of [gun violence in the community], there’s other people who have gone through the same thing, and to me it’s strange that I was the one who made a difference.”
As for the man who shot him, Liam said he wants him to be put in jail, but he also hopes he isn’t from the Gallup community.
“I’m looking to seek justice against them and I’m hoping they will go to prison, but one thing I’m kind of hoping for is that they left Gallup,” he said. “I don’t want those people around to shoot another person.”
Liam’s grandmother Connie Donaldson is offering a $10,000 award to anyone who has information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the man who shot Liam.
By Molly Ann Howell
Managing Editor
