Paralyzed in shooting, scientist may see breakthrough work lost

Night after night, Shelly Williams slept in the African trees so she would be safe from prowling leopards and hyenas.

Now she can’t climb the stairs from the ground floor of her three-story Smyrna townhouse.

Once she moved freely through the jungles of the Congo with the help of indigenous people charmed by her knowledge of their language and her understanding of their culture.

Now she is limited by paralysis and a wheelchair.

The world-renowned primatologist survived armed rebels and discovered what may be a new species of ape in a career packed with adventure.

Yet a routine errand on a routine day in 2005 placed her in the greatest danger she ever faced: On the way to a tailor in a suburban Atlanta strip mall, she was shot by a stray bullet fired in a drug deal gone bad.

On Monday, Williams, who is paralyzed from the waist down, will watch the two men accused of shooting her go on trial in Cobb Superior Court.

Kendall Bolden and Elliott Mitchell are charged with aggravated assault and possession of a firearm in connection with Williams’ shooting. They are also charged with the kidnapping and armed robbery of Terrance Reid, a suspected drug dealer they supposedly robbed of jewelry and cash.

At 53 but with the “heart of a 30-year-old,” Williams understands that the life she knew is gone.

“Both my husband and I have changed, and we are quite apprehensive and sad and angry,” she said.

At the time of the shooting, Williams was planning a return trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo to further document the animals she had caught on camera in 2001. With characteristics of both gorillas and chimpanzees, the apes could be a new species of primate. If so, New Scientist magazine has said, it could be one of the most important wildlife discoveries in decades.

But now it is difficult for Williams, who requires almost constant care, to move about the first-floor room that was once her office and is now her bedroom. Her husband, Al Hofstetter, lives on the two floors above her.

“I haven’t been up there in years,” she said.

“I’ve been in and out of the hospital from being a paraplegic and having a bullet in my liver.”

Her medical bills are in the hundreds of thousands, she said, and “my credit cards are gone. I’ll never get credit anywhere.”

And Williams and her husband are unlikely to ever be in a position to buy a one-story house.

She is also healing from two broken legs.

She broke one when she fell out of her wheelchair while trying to help her nurse make the bed. Because she has no feeling below the waist, she’s not sure what happened to the other.

“I think my foot fell to the bottom of the tub while I was trying to shave my legs and I think it caused a compression fracture,” she said.

That leg has a titanium rod in it and she had to endure weeks of physical therapy.

Her years of work and her discovery may be for naught without the final documentation. She has tried to return to the paper she was writing before she was shot but “I get tired easily, and it’s hard for me to concentrate. I have memory damage,” said Williams, who has a doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Montana.

Williams has not forgiven the men she believes are responsible for her injury, and she doesn’t know whether she ever will.

“I’m hoping at the end of the trial … I will have some time to speak openly [to the jurors],” she said. “This whole thing reflects society today. In America you can’t be sure anywhere you go that you’re safe. It has to do with the government and the gun laws. And what ever happened to the war against drugs? My case reflects the general public’s and our inattention to these things.”

In contrast, Williams said, is the African jungle, where the animals and the environment are jealously protected and nothing is wasted. “They only take what they need. They share their food. They are very communal. It’s something, I’m sure, our culture had and lost.

“The place touched my heart,” Williams said. “I wasn’t going to retire. I was going to keep going as a scientist until I died.”