CINCINNATI — Jackie Jackson II is happy to be back home, but he's even happier to be alive.
The 37-year-old underwent four hours of surgery and spent a week at UC Medical Center after someone shot him the day after Christmas.
"A little pain but day by day," Jackson said on Monday. "Shout out to UC staff. They did a good job getting me back together and holding me together."
Jackson was discharged from the hospital to continue his recovery at home. He's still sore with stitches and currently uses a cane to move around.
He recounted the night he was shot, explaining he was defending his loved ones from 38-year-old Brandon Lundy when shots were fired.
Jackson said Lundy, the father of his girlfriend's children, was picking up his daughter from his home. When he arrived, he was immediately aggressive, making threats and trying to get into the home.
"That's when I recognized he had a gun and so I told everybody to go inside the house and close the door and I was trying to de-escalate the situation," Jackson said. "We exchanged words on the porch for about five, six minutes and then (my girlfriend) came out the door and he spit on her, so I punched him."
That's when Jackson said Lundy pulled the trigger, two of those bullets hitting him in the stomach.
"We start fighting over the gun after he shot me, but I wanted to get him away from everybody 'cause there were kids up here, neighbors and stuff on the porch, so I didn't want anybody innocent to get hit. That was my main thing," Jackson said. "He was firing off wildly and I'm thinking like -- you're kids are up here too."
Cincinnati police arrested Lundy that night, charging him with one count of felonious assault. On Jan. 4, a Hamilton County grand jury indicted Lundy on two counts of felonious assault as well as one count of attempted murder.
Booked in the Hamilton County Jail on a $75,000 bond, Lundy's next court appearance is scheduled for Friday at 8:30 a.m.
"Sounds about right," Jackson said. "He tried to kill somebody. It was very unnecessary but I'm pretty sure he's sitting in there doing a lot of thinking."
Jackson has also done a lot of thinking.
Now past the initial shock of the shooting, he said he's finally able to let the reality set in — this isn't the first time he's been shot.
Jackson said he also fell victim in 2007 when a group tried robbing him in Walnut Hills.
"I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said. "I got hit and ended up having to run down I-71 and trying to get people to stop, but they're not stopping cause it's the middle of the night."
But the pain didn't start there. Jackson's father, prominent anti-violence advocate Pastor Jackie Jackson, is also a shooting survivor. He was shot in the hand when he was just 10 years old.
"Over the last nine years, (my family) has had nine family members' lives taken by gun violence," Pastor Jackson told WCPO back in December.
Now his son is the eighth person in his family to survive gun violence, he said.
"The victim, the one that's wounded, the one that's shot and survived — there's a long road that we often don't think about past the news bite, past this happened and then, unfortunately how life goes, it's on from one family to the next," Pastor Jackson said. "My family, anybody's family — it's a long road. That is a lot to deal with. The trauma is a lot."
Jackson II intends to follow in his father's footsteps. He wants to share his own message and advocate for peace not only in Cincinnati, but across the country too.
"You don't have to be all suited up and walking around. You can look like me and still push the narrative of nonviolence," Jackson said. "We gotta stop glorifying violence. We gotta stop glorifying murder. All the popular music involves killing somebody, and it involves killing somebody that looks like you and sounds like you," he said. "I've seen a lot of cats that have that murderous mentality and then they go to jail and they're in there crying. Well, if you would have made that decision right then and there to not do that, then we wouldn't be in this situation."
Jackson will be unable to work for several weeks as he recovers. A GoFundMe has been created on his behalf to ease the financial burden on him and his family in the meantime. As of Monday, nearly 100 people have donated to the campaign.
"It's beautiful. I'm grateful," said Jackson. "It goes to show that people can come together and people can care for people even if it's not just their family or people that they know."
