Northeastern Pa. shooting victim: ‘I was never afraid’
STROUDSBURG – They planned to go out together for ice cream after the Ross Township municipal meeting a month ago.
Linda and Jerry Kozic picked up their friend and neighbor, Vinny LaGuardia, on the way to the Ross Township building. Jerry was looking to make a run for township supervisor in the fall, and the three decided they would return for LaGuardia’s wife to go out for frozen treats afterward.
But 20 minutes into the evening meeting, a gunman opened fire. The three were sitting in the back row when Linda said she thought the halogen lights began making a popping noise.
Her husband told her it was gunfire and to get down.
The shooting eventually left LaGuardia and Jerry dead, along with Chestnuthill Township Supervisor Dave Fleetwood, and Linda clinging to life.
Linda rested last week in a wheelchair under the shade of a large oak tree in the yard of the house she shared with Jerry.
Her left leg, wrapped in layers over the place two inches below her knee where a bullet entered, sat propped on a bench. The gunshot shattered both large bones in her leg.
Linda said talking through what happened is helping her now.
She often smiled and laughed, brushing back her long blonde hair as she explained who her husband was and described their musical performances together, sometimes with their dog Fritz, who could bark “Jingle Bells.”
But even during the horror of the evening of Aug. 5, Linda said she was calm.
“I was never afraid,” she said. “I just was at peace.”
The gunman, identified by police as Rockne Newell, entered through the main entrance to the building then briefly moved back into the parking lot.
LaGuardia rushed toward a side door exit, with Jerry pushing Linda behind LaGuardia.
“We were like rats in a maze. How do we get out?” Linda said.
As LaGuardia was jumping down the steps toward the woods, the shooter aimed and fired.
“Vinny was gone very quickly,” Linda said.
As the gunman then began to turn the corner, Linda’s leg was exposed and she said she saw the bullet enter, fired from close range.
Jerry tried to tie a tourniquet when she told him she couldn’t move but a woman approached and said she would sit on the wound to try to stop the bleeding.
“There’s so many people who were instrumental in this,” she said, naming medics, nurses and doctors who helped save her life.
The gunman then approached, Linda said.
“There was nothing in his eyes. He was as completely devoid of humanity as anything I’ve ever seen,” she said, comparing them to a zombie’s eyes on TV.
But even in a moment of what would be sheer panic, Linda was strong and defiant.
“I said, ‘No more, mister. I had enough.”‘
Linda said she was propped on her elbows, believing that if she laid down she would die.
A witness told her later that the shooter was aiming for her head when her husband stepped into the way and was shot. Linda said she knew immediately when Jerry was shot that he was dead, though someone performed CPR.
“I knew he was gone, but you keep hoping against hope,” she said.
Linda said amid her extreme pain and loss of blood, she heard the struggle that brought the gunman down.
Then she caught the sound of a familiar voice – Pocono Mountain Regional Police Chief Harry Lewis, who was en route home and had responded to the scene.
“I knew I was going to be all right when I heard Harry,” she said, whom she knows through her side work in web design.
Linda said she lost at least two liters of blood, though a first responder took her blood pressure as a miraculous 120/70.
She said she knew the young medics were seeing something no one should have to see, and she relied on her characteristic humor in bad situations to crack jokes. “I said, ‘Dang it, I’m going to make it.”‘
Linda said her pain was over 20 on a scale of one to 10, and the next thing she asked for was morphine as responders put her into a helicopter for transport to the hospital.
“I can handle a lot of pain,” she said. “This is the kind of pain that can kill you.”
Doctors performed a CAT scan to ensure she had been struck by no other bullets. She remembers the next few days hazily.
She had four surgeries, including one for skin grafts on her leg that now has a permanent rod and plate in place. Family and friends surrounded her over the next two weeks in the hospital and continue to support her.
“They were there the whole time,” Linda said. “God bless them.”
She left the hospital Aug. 16 but continues to have her bandages changed every day as the risk of infection continues. For now, she said, her routine is doctors, then it will be rehab and more doctors over an estimated 16-month recovery.
But moving forward without her husband, the breadwinner for the couple and love of her life, will be most difficult.
“I miss my husband deeply, but I know he’s here,” she said.
Linda and Jerry met in the 1980s and started as friends before becoming something more, marrying and performing in concerts together for years.
“Our hearts were never more than six feet apart,” she said, calling Jerry her soulmate.
She said Jerry was running for supervisor after becoming more interested in politics and, like his sister, a supervisor in Tobyhanna Township, was someone who refused to be complacent.
“They are doers,” Linda said. “They’re people that look out for the underdog.”