by Shirley Shaw
When he fully awakened in the hospital, Jaguars Defensive End Richard Collier didn’t know all that was wrong with him. He did know he’d been shot. While sitting in the passenger side of his vehicle with a friend one night, someone fired at him through the car seat from the open back door, hitting him 14 times. He felt no pain, actually didn’t know he’d been shot until he was in the ambulance.
“I thought maybe I’d be out for a couple of weeks because I could breathe and felt OK. I never thought it would be that serious. But when I first woke up, I couldn’t sit up, do anything. I couldn’t have lifted five pounds.” For someone who routinely bench pressed nearly 400 pounds and lifted 700+ in the squat, it was frightening and frustrating.
“I felt numb, like I had been lying down forever, and I told my sister (who is a nurse) that I wanted to get up. She started crying and told me my leg had been amputated and that I was paralyzed from the waist down. It felt like a punch in the gut. I didn’t know it was that bad. When I was in the ambulance, I had no idea I wouldn’t be able to walk again.
In one split second everything he’d worked so hard to achieve was gone. “There is no way to describe how I felt,” he says. “I couldn’t stand to watch the games. My friends were out there playing and I was lying in bed knowing I’d never walk onto a football field again. But eventually I got over it and could watch the games. I told myself I had to deal with it, deal with life, face it and go on.”
From all accounts, Tyrone Hartsfield had followed Richard and his friend from a San Marco nightclub and tried to kill him in retaliation for an altercation at another club four months earlier. Following a month-long investigation, JSO detectives arrested Hartsfield in October 2008, and his trial was held in November 2009. After deliberating three hours, the 12-member jury found Hartsfield guilty of attempted first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Richard takes no joy in the conviction, but he knows they got the right man. Everyone in the courtroom was touched by his impact statement to the judge at the sentencing phase of the trial. “I am not only physically scarred but emotionally as well. My ability to live out my dream of playing football has been snatched away from me. All of my hard work, blood, sweat, and tears seem to mean nothing any more. Playing for the Jaguars was a dream come true and I looked forward to an exciting, fulfilling career.
"My body will forever be disfigured; the use of my lower extremities is gone. When I get married, I can't stand and watch my bride come down the aisle. If I have boys someday, I won't be able to teach them how to play football. What I have had to go through, I would not wish on my worst enemy. I feel that nothing on earth can give me the satisfaction I seek for what was done to me; however, I ask that justice be served.”
The Justice Coalition began working with Richard soon after he got out of the hospital. Not only did he have to learn how to cope with his disabilities, he had to face all the ensuing issues involved in seeing his assailant brought to justice. He says, “the Justice Coalition was always there when I needed them, always letting me know what was going on with the trial, my rights as a victim, and other things I didn’t know.”
Local businessman Ted Hires (owner of four Sonny's BBQ franchises) started the Justice Coalition in 1995 when he realized the criminal justice system was more interested in the criminal's rights than the victim's. During the trial of thugs who held a gun to his head, forced him and his staff to crawl on the floor and demanded his money, he was just a witness. They were the ones with lawyers at their sides, making sure their rights were not violated. What about his rights?
Many changes to benefit victims have occurred since then: tougher laws, stricter enforcement of those already in place, stiffer sentences for crimes, more awareness of the needs of victims' families. The Victims' Advocate, a monthly newspaper of the JC, features unsolved murders and missing persons, wanted fugitives, educational articles about victims' rights, safety tips for families, and legislative updates . The organization holds press conferences to post rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of individual(s) responsible for crimes.
Hundreds of families traumatized by murder and other violent crimes have been assisted by victim advocates of the JC who provided crisis intervention in the aftermath of tragedy and helped them through judicial proceedings, which include numerous and lengthy pre-trial hearings, trials and sentencing.
This 501(c)3 non-profit organization has a three-fold mission: 1) to advocate for innocent victims of violent crimes, 2) to educate the public on criminal justice issues, and 3) to work with law enforcement and be pro-active in the fight against crime, to make our community safer.
Website: www.justicecoalition.org
Email: justice@justicecoalition.org
Phone: 904/783-6312; Fax: 904/783-4172
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