CORONADO, Calif. (KGTV) - The Coronado teenager nearly shot to death in a robbery last spring is now a real estate agent, possibly the youngest in his community.
At just 19, Jacob McKanry took the test to get his license just days after getting released from the hospital.
The Coronado High School Senior nearly died after he was shot selling jewelry to a couple of guys he met online.
McKanry and a friend met the so-called buyers on Orange Avenue around 9 p.m. on May 4th.
One of the guys grabbed the necklace while the other pulled out a gun. McKanry tried to get back the jewelry.
"I just hear a giant boom from behind me, and I feel my insides go like this," said McKanry.
He said the shooter than aimed for McKanry's friend.
"My buddy was backing up, and he fell over a bike rack and the bullet, he shot right as he fell over so, the bullet went right over his head and hit that Which Wich window which definitely saved his life," said McKanry.
McKanry was released from the hospital after ten days, but ultimately readmitted with a near-lethal infection.
He says he still has pain in his liver and pressure in his lungs. He endured a ten-hour surgery to have the bullet, lodged between his spine and aorta, removed.
"It went through the back, at first it shattered part of one of my ribs, so that's how it entered into the body. So I broke, for lack of a better term, broke 2 of my ribs, and it took out a baseball chunk size of my liver. It punctured and collapsed my lung filing with blood, fractured my spine, shaved off part of my aorta, causing a pseudoaneurysm," said McKanry.
McKanry said he was sure he would die.
"I leaned over, coughed into my hand, I spit up blood, and I was like well this is bad, I was like I'm pretty much going to die here," he said.
His Christian faith brought him comfort.
"I was at peace, and it's going to be weird when I say this, but I was even happy, obviously, not happy that I got shot, but I pretty much knew where I was going. I knew that I was going to die and I knew that I was going to be soon reunited with the person that created me, so I was just peaceful. I was looking up at the stars and,I was happy, I was ready to go," said McKanry.
Today the nineteen-year-old is excited about selling real estate. He's also studying business through Santa Barbara City College.
Police arrested 3 teenagers. A judge recently sentenced the seventeen-year-old boy who set up the robbery to three years in juvenile detention. An eighteen-year-old is charged with being the getaway driver, and a second seventeen-year-old is accused of being the shooter.
McKanry wants the shooter tried as an adult, but he also has compassion.
"I hope that he finds God, and I hope that he understands that what he did was absolutely wrong, and I hope that he is able to change his life around," said McKanry.
McKanry hopes to use his ordeal to share a message.
"Always, always, always be thankful for what God lays in your path and never take anything for granted, cause you could go outside one day and it will all be gone," said McKanry.
