DENVER -- 52-year old Orlando Reed was supposed to just walk home after getting off work.
“About two blocks away I saw a lady staggering down the street and I thought maybe she was drunk at first,” Reed said.
But as Reed got closer, he noticed the woman was in desperate need.
“Her nose looked like it was broken, she had dried blood all over her mouth, her eyes were swollen,” Reed said.
Barely standing on her two feet, the woman pleaded with Reed to walk her home after escaping her boyfriend's beating.
“I just felt sorry for the girl because she was a nervous wreck,” Reed said.
Reed walked her back to her place and ran into the bathroom to get a towel to wash the blood off her face but then he heard a loud knocking on the door.
The woman's boyfriend, John Walch, couldn't get into the door, so he broke the window. He then left for a few moments and returned with a gun.
“He started shooting inside the room,” Reed said.
A bullet hit Reed in the back and slowly he started blacking out.
“He had left and she started moving around the room grabbing what she can grab and I asked her call somebody or call police or call the ambulance or something. She just kept saying, 'I’m sorry, I'm sorry,' and next thing you know, she was gone,” Reed said.
Reed, who was left for dead, bled for seven and half hours.
The bullet hit his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the waist down.
“It’s a big change because I have to be helped to do just about everything from toiletry to cleaning myself,” Reed said.
But despite being robbed of his independence, Reed is keeping a positive outlook.
"It's my new life and I have to figure out what I'm going to do with it,” Reed said.
Reed doesn’t regret helping the woman and he says he would help again knowing what he knows now. His shooter, John Walch, received a life sentence.
