Shot while trimming lawn, Kirkwood man continues recovery

By Christian Boone

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Over the din of his electric trimmer, Kenneth Hagen heard the red SUV approach, speeding toward him then stopping abruptly 10 feet away on Kirkwood's Ridgedale Road.

A baby-faced teen emerged from the back seat of the Ford Expedition, flashing a pistol.

"Drop it," he said.

Hagen, still holding the string trimmer, was flummoxed.

"I said I don't have anything," Hagen, 56, recalled Thursday from his home, where the Aug. 21 shooting occurred. After a brief struggle, the teen pumped two bullets into Hagen's chest and torso. A third grazed his left arm.

"I heard the door slam open and then this horrible noise, like an animal in pain," said his wife, Linda Hagen, who was in the kitchen fixing a tomato sandwich. "It's a sound I hope to never hear again."

The last thing her husband remembered was the flashing ambulance lights outside Grady Memorial Hosptial, where he'd spend the next five weeks hooked to a ventilator.

“The man was just cutting his grass and he gets shot,” said Kirkwood resident Inell Jones.

Hagen barely survived that first week, and his condition remained critical through the middle of September.

Right about that time Atlanta police charged 18-year-old Terrance Hambrick, arrested Sept. 2 on a probation violation, in his shooting. Hambrick denied pulling the trigger but admitted to police that he was at the scene. Two other suspects, including one female, remain at large.

Hagen is expected to recover fully, though he's still unable to exert much energy. He's dropped more than 30 pounds since the shooting, and the loss of two feet of his small intestine has made it difficult for him to digest anything more substantial than soup. He tried to eat some vegetables for dinner Wednesday but couldn't hold them down. A nightly IV pack provides him with dietary essentials.

"The miraculous thing is the bullets didn't hit any organs or blood vessels," said Hagen, who hopes to return to his job as a medical technologist with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta by year's end.

He said he pities the teen charged in shooting.

"To me it's really sad," Hagen said. "He's pretty much thrown his life away. I don't have any anger."

His wife's having a harder time forgiving Hagen's attackers.

"I'm angry our life changed in an instant," said the 45-year-old social worker. "It's something I just won't ever understand."

Following the shooting Hagen said she wanted out of Kirkwood, where the couple moved nearly eight years ago. Over that time they've dealt with a number of petty crimes and break-ins, as have many other residents of this gentrified community just south of Decatur.

"My immediate  reaction was, ‘That's it, we're leaving,' " she said. But the generosity of her neighbors, many of whom she barely knew, changed her mind.

"They literally kept our life together," Linda Hagen said. "They fed our dogs and cat. They cut our lawn. Within 30 minutes of the shooting we had 30 neighbors at the hospital. They took care of everything."

"We've gone from being neighbors to being family," she said. "I don't know how we could leave now."