It took a trip to UF’s infirmary for Christopher Joyce to find out he had been shot.
Now, almost four months after a hollow-point bullet pierced his apartment wall and hit him in the leg, the 21-year-old economics junior is taking action.
On Tuesday, Joyce filed a lawsuit against the security guard whose gun discharged the bullet that hit him as he was sleeping in his 2nd Avenue Centre apartment in July.
Joyce is seeking about $15,000 in damages from Jimmy L. Dixon, the security guard; One Global Security, Dixon’s security company; and American Campus Communities Services, which owns the apartment complex and hired Dixon.
On the night of the incident, Joyce woke up with a pain in his leg, Daniel Vazquez, Joyce’s attorney, said Thursday.
Joyce went to wash off the wound. When he returned, he noticed a small hole in his wall he described “like a rat had chewed through the wall.”
Thirty minutes later, Vazquez said, Dixon knocked on Joyce’s door, saying he heard a noise and wanted to make sure everything was all right.
Vazquez is accusing Dixon of never admitting to Joyce that the bullet came from his gun.
“He was very evasive about what happened,” Vazquez said.
The next day, Joyce went to the infirmary, where doctors found metal shrapnel in his thigh. He then went to Shands at UF, where surgeons told him they could not remove the pieces, Vazquez said.
“The risk of taking out the fragments, because of the close proximity to vital arteries in the leg, was too high,” he said. “He could bleed out during the surgery.”
Because Joyce fell asleep sitting up, the bullet hit his leg. If he had been in a different position, Vazquez said, the bullet could have killed him.
“He is extremely lucky,” Vazquez said.
The case is still being investigated by Gainesville Police, but officers have not filed any charges, he said.
According to the suit, Dixon carried a pistol loaded with 9 mm hollow-point bullets.
The bullet type raised concerns with Vazquez because the round is designed to hit a target and expand.
“It’s an excessively dangerous type of ammunition for what his job entailed,” he said.
If Dixon had loaded his gun with 9 mm bullets, Vazquez said, the discharged one could have gone completely through Joyce’s leg, which could have resulted in less damage.
“It was rough for a while on crutches,” Joyce said. “After that, now everything is back in order.”
Dixon and an American Campus Communities Services representative could not be reached for comment.
Contact Chris Alcantara at calcantara@alligator.org.
