THE DOC NORRIS STORY - Long
Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 5:02 pm
Charleston Post & Courier
BY RON MENCHACA
Franklin Lee McGirt scanned the rows of tidy, working-class homes as he wandered down Nu Shell Street on the outskirts of Georgetown. A petty thief looking for his next target.
Around lunchtime on May 12, 2003, a woman doing yard work saw McGirt on her neighbor's porch and asked what he wanted. He said he was interested in mowing her neighbor's lawn. She noticed the lawn didn't need mowing and hollered for her husband. McGirt bolted, leaving behind the front door with its weather stripping half pulled away.
He showed up a few blocks away on Missroon Street, and checked out a new burglary mark: a tan double-wide with green shutters.
McGirt crept up to the back of the house through a patch of dense woods. He yanked a ceramic birdbath from the yard and used its steel support rod to pry open the back door. A yapping schnauzer met him inside. He threatened the dog, and it scampered outside.
Moving quickly through the house, McGirt threw open drawers and cabinets. He'd broken into enough homes to know where folks usually kept jewelry and valuables. He pulled a blue suitcase from beneath the bed in the master bedroom and began filling it with silverware.
A wooden cabinet in a corner of the master bedroom caught his eye. Opening it, his gaze fixed on a lever-action hunting rifle with a black telescope. He rummaged through some drawers, found boxes of cartridges and loaded the rifle. He carried the rifle at his side as he continued through the house.
Then he froze at the sound of jangling keys at the front door. Doc Norris unlocked the front door of his tan double-wide and stepped inside. He worked as an electrician, and his wiring job that morning was nearby. So he drove home to eat lunch and let his dog out. But his schnauzer, Heidi, who always jumped and barked when Norris' keys clinked at the front door, didn't come running. Perhaps Norris' daughter, Beth, who lived next door, had already come over to let the dog out. She happened to be home that day doing spring cleaning.
Norris paused in his living room to pick up the cordless phone from the end table. Behind him, the glossy eyes in a mounted deer head kept watch.
He shot the deer on a hunting trip a few years back, sighting it in the crosshairs of a black telescope mounted on his lever-action .30-30 rifle.
Norris headed to the master bedroom to use the bathroom, passing a blue suitcase that lay open on the bed. Normally it was kept underneath.
He raised the phone to his ear to call his daughter as he walked back through the living room toward the kitchen, his mind on eating lunch. McGirt eased toward the footsteps, the rifle clutched across his lanky body. He paused in the kitchen and aimed the rifle at the sound coming toward him.
McGirt had recently been let out of prison after serving time on a burglary conviction. Prosecutors had cut him a break, and he was sentenced under a more lenient youthful offender law. He served a little more than a year and was back on the streets before his 19th birthday.
He wasted little time getting back to old habits. Police suspected him in a recent rash of break-ins, including one at a local church. He broke into one house so frequently that the homeowner set up a video camera and recorded McGirt making a bee-line for the change jar.
He told court officials that he drank heavily, smoked marijuana and dealt crack cocaine. He said that he grew up watching men physically abuse women. He boasted that he beat up girlfriends and killed litters of kittens with a shovel handle. "I still like killing stuff," he bragged.
McGirt's parents divorced when he was a toddler, and he grew into his teens bouncing between the homes of family and friends. Burglary outbreaks moved with him. The break-ins often occurred in blue-collar neighborhoods where most of the residents worked during the day. He didn't count on them coming home for lunch.
Norris walked out of the master bedroom and started dialing his daughter's number to see if she knew where his dog was. As he neared the kitchen, he saw a man and the barrel of his hunting rifle pointed at him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Norris demanded. "What does it look like I'm doing?" McGirt replied. They stared at each other for a moment, 6 feet apart. Norris offered the money in his pocket. He told McGirt to keep the rifle and to go, please. "I'm not going to leave a witness," McGirt said.
An explosion and a blast of fire erupted. The bullet smashed into Norris' face.
McGirt sprinted with the rifle out the back door and into the woods.
Norris tumbled onto a chair and his limp body rolled onto the blue carpet. Blood gushed from a void where his chin and neck had been.
About this series
This is the first day of a 4-part series. To tell the story, Post and Courier reporter Ron Menchaca used interviews and court, police and medical records. Contact him at (843) 937-5724 or rmenchaca@postandcourier.com.
http://www.charleston.net/assets/web...Date=12/3/2006
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PART 2
Daughter's worst nightmare
Emergency workers scramble, a pastor prays and a gunshot victim's life hangs in the balance
BY RON MENCHACA
It takes just minutes to bleed to death. The blue living room carpet turned purple as blood spilled from Doc Norris' mutilated face. A bloody cordless phone lay on the floor. Next door, his daughter Beth Norris busied herself with spring cleaning. She did not hear the shot over the whir of her vacuum cleaner. But the blinking red light on the telephone caught her attention. The caller ID told her it was from her parents' house. She picked up the phone and heard gurgling. "Daddy, what's wrong?" She feared her father was having a heart attack. Running next door, she screamed into the phone. "Daddy, I'm coming."
She threw open the front door of the house. Her dad was doubled over in the living room, clawing at a chair. Blood covered everything. Beth knew CPR, but the shot from the hunting rifle blew away her dad's mouth. Diving to the floor, she heaved her dad's limp body to her chest. Norris' body writhed, his feet kicked and his arms flailed. She wrestled to keep him still while forcing her hand into the void of his face to clench the spurting blood vessels. She fumbled with the phone in her other hand and reached a neighbor, who called 911.
The emergency dispatch call went out over the radio as a suicide attempt. An ambulance sped toward Missroon Street. Medics rushed inside and tried to make sense of the injury through the rush of blood spilling onto the floor. It was the type of wound usually seen on a battlefield.
Paramedics did all they could as the ambulance sirens wailed down the highway toward Georgetown Memorial Hospital, but they were sure they were carrying a corpse. Seconds later, the heart monitor wired to Norris flatlined. He'd lost so much blood.
l l
Franklin Lee McGirt's heart pounded as he darted through the woods. He sprinted to a friend's house and bummed a ride to a store along the highway. As they drove, he could see police cars and an ambulance careening toward Missroon Street. He'd committed dozens of burglaries over the years, but none had escalated to such violence.
Neighbors gathered in the street. They shook their heads and wiped their eyes as deputies strung crime scene tape around the house. Inside, investigators pieced together the clues: A box of rifle cartridges dumped out. A blue suitcase open on the bed and filled with prescription medicines and silverware. Blood and chunks of flesh splattered on the walls. Shards of dentures scattered on the blue carpet. A hunting rifle missing from the gun cabinet in the master bedroom.
Detectives zeroed in on a splintered section of door framing between the kitchen and the living room. They traced the trajectory of a bullet and ruled out suicide. Beth Norris wanted to be in the ambulance with her father, but investigators kept her at the house for questioning. They asked if she had any reason to want him dead. She muttered responses as best she could. But she had trouble answering as the blood on her clothes and skin began to dry, and she felt like vomiting. Deputies tested her hands for gunshot residue and searched her house before letting her follow her father to the hospital.
Investigators' suspicion turned to an intruder. It appeared to be a botched burglary. They discovered a fresh footprint in the woods behind Norris' house. A team of bloodhounds sniffed out more tracks nearby until the trail turned cold.
McGirt wore gloves during the break-in, so investigators found no fingerprints. But if they could find the shoe that made the imprints in the dirt, that would be nearly as valuable.
Georgetown County Sheriff A. Lane Cribb cleared the decks and told his deputies and investigators that solving this crime would be their top priority. He feared residents would panic as news spread that the shooter had gotten away and was armed.
l l l
The Rev. Brad Morris arrived at the hospital in time to see paramedics wheel in his parishioner. But the man on the gurney was unrecognizable. Morris peered through the window of the emergency room where doctors and nurses swirled around Norris. A doctor came out, sullen. "Are you a minister?" Morris replied with a soft "yes." "You need to get in there. You can do more for him now than we can." Morris walked into the room and took a spot in the corner, bowed his head, squeezed his eyes tight and prayed. "God, please take care of him in the passage from life to death."
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PART 3
Intense, urgent manhunt
Authorities feared Franklin McGirt would shoot someone else with rifle stolen from Doc Norris
BY RON MENCHACA
Tubes and wires snaked across Doc Norris' chest and what remained of his face. If doctors had any chance to save him, they knew, they had to get him to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, the closest hospital capable of treating his catastrophic gunshot wound.
Judy Norris, who had been at work when her husband was shot, rushed into the Georgetown Memorial Hospital emergency ward and begged to see him. The Rev. Brad Morris, the Norrises' pastor, blocked her. He did not want her to see the gaping hole where her husband's jaw and chin had been. The lips she knew in kisses were gone.
Norris' grasp on life slipped as a trauma helicopter lifted off from Georgetown for the 50-mile trip down the coast to Charleston. In mid-flight his heart stopped, but medics resuscitated him shortly before the helicopter descended to MUSC, where doctors and nurses readied a trauma room.
l l l
At dawn, the morning after the shooting, the morning after she'd used her hands to clamp the spurting arteries in her father's neck, Beth Norris gassed up the lawn mower to cut the grass.
Then she braced herself for the grisly task of cleaning up the room where a burglar shot her dad. As she scrubbed the blood splatter and hunks of flesh from the walls, her strokes grew faster and more vigorous and her mind filled with anger.
News of the shooting traveled fast, terrifying Georgetown residents. Deputies and investigators fanned across the county following tips and tapping informants. One name kept surfacing: Franklin Lee McGirt, a known petty burglar.
They plastered his mug shot on "Wanted" posters and hung them around the county. The Georgetown Times blasted a front-page headline - "Suspect identified in shooting" - over a mug shot of McGirt. Judy Norris stared at the photo of the man in the newspaper. He looked so young.
Investigators feared McGirt would shoot again to avoid being sent back to prison. They chased every lead as the case grew more urgent with each passing day. One tip had McGirt trying to flee to Connecticut on a Greyhound bus. Another said he tried to pawn the hunting rifle he used to shoot Norris. A search of a house where McGirt was said to be hiding came up empty.
McGirt did not behave like a fugitive. He brazenly walked along the railroad tracks outside the city holding the rifle, and he broke into at least one more house. He showed off the rifle to friends and concocted a story about how he'd run from Norris' house ducking bullets. He even carried his stolen rifle down to the banks of the Sampit River for target practice. As he fired, the recoil forced the hard black scope back into McGirt's forehead, leaving a nasty bruise.
Despite McGirt's frequent outdoor excursions, investigators did not get a break until a tipster revealed McGirt was hiding out at a friend's house in the nearby town of Andrews. In the early morning darkness, a SWAT team and a task force of officers and deputies from several surrounding jurisdictions raided the hideout, an old boat stored behind a house. McGirt was already gone, but in his haste he left behind a pair of black-and-white Nike shoes. Their size 8 1/2 footprint resembled an imprint that investigators discovered in the dirt behind Norris' house after the shooting.
Nearly a week into the manhunt, McGirt grew exhausted and paranoid. He knew police were closing in and he was tired of running. Early one morning, McGirt's mother and an aunt drove him to the Georgetown County Detention Center, where he turned himself in. Investigators could not believe their luck. A videotape of the interrogation started rolling just before 2 p.m. on May 19, 2003, almost exactly a week since McGirt shot Norris.
At first, McGirt was evasive and cocky with investigators. He clung to a weak alibi and said he didn't know anything about a break-in on Missroon Street. Desperate to get the rifle off the street, investigators grew impatient: "We need you to tell us where the gun is before somebody else gets hurt. I promise you if a child gets hurt by that gun, you'll go to the electric chair."
The physical toll of a week on the run drained McGirt. He puffed a cigarette to calm his jangled nerves. Where's the rifle, Frankie? Why did you shoot him, Frankie? Finally, he cracked: "I didn't even look at him. I just pulled the trigger."
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PART 4 - FINAL
Long and painful journey stretches on
Doc Norris struggles to regain sense of normalcy
BY RON MENCHACA
The Post and Courier
Doc Norris was alive. His condition finally stabilized a couple of weeks after the shooting. Now, the struggle to rebuild his face - and his life - began.
Underneath long white coils of bandages, the lower half of his face hung in tatters, his lower lip, chin and the remaining stub of his tongue barely discernible. The sides of his jaw hung with no connecting bone in the middle.
He breathed through one tube and ate through another. His eyes spoke of sadness and pain.
Weeks would pass before Norris stabilized enough to undergo the first of nearly two dozen facial-reconstruction surgeries. Some procedures spanned several hours as surgeons deftly blended art and
A titanium plate filled the gap between the floating hinges of his jaw, while skin and bone grafted from his shoulder blades formed a new chin.
But the new layers of skin looked thick and unnatural, so surgeons performed frequent follow-up surgeries to cut open the bulk and scoop and burn away the extra tissue. If they cut a millimeter too deep, the fragile transplanted tissue would die and the painstaking rebuilding process would have started all over.
No medical manuals existed to guide them through the complexities of re-creating and shaping Norris' lower lip, which after countless surgeries stubbornly held a deep crease that acted like a spout on a pitcher of water and caused him to drool.
Each grueling operation left Norris' face swollen and throbbing. Massive doses of morphine deadened the pain of phantom nerve endings, but the steady drug fix formed an addiction, and Norris soon added detox to his torturous journey.
Norris spent nearly three months confined to a hospital bed in Charleston before he was able to return home to Georgetown, where he faced new challenges.
His home haunted him. At night, he bolted awake in bed, soaking wet. The nightmares repeated the same scene: He confronts a stranger in the kitchen. An explosion. Unfathomable pain.
Even his dog, Heidi, could not forget. Heidi would not go near the back door where Franklin Lee McGirt forced his way inside, and when the dog trotted through the living room, she arced around the spot on the blue carpet where Norris nearly bled to death. The family tried to get the blood out but finally had to replace the stained section.
Crippling self-consciousness enveloped Norris when he ventured out in public. He felt like a baby when saliva spilled from his mouth. Like a child clutching a security blanket, he toted a white towel with him everywhere to swipe at the spittle. People stared when the family went into the city, and Norris knew his appearance made people uncomfortable.
Norris' family shuttled him between Georgetown and Charleston for countless surgeries and speech therapy sessions.
Counselors helped him quell the hate in his heart. But for a while he despised all young black men, even though his Bible and his pastor told him that was wrong. When investigators returned Norris' rifle, his family kept it from him because they feared he would harm himself.
Coming home also meant confronting medical bills that would grow to nearly $1 million. Payments from a state victims' fund quickly ran out, and Social Security denied Norris' request for dentures to replace the set that was blown to bits in the shooting. The hospitals wrote off all the bills they could.
His church and churches he did not attend took up collections for the family. The local diner where Norris used to sip coffee in a worn booth placed a donation jar on the lunch counter. A local motorcycle club organized a charity ride.
In a search for normalcy, Norris climbed a ladder to make a home repair. He fell and broke his collarbone. Doctors treating the injury discovered bone cancer. In the midst of his recovery and the reconstruction surgeries, Norris added radiation and chemotherapy treatments to his calendar.
* * *
About one year after the shooting, with McGirt's trial set to begin, deputy solicitor Bo Bryan felt good about his case. But juries can be unpredictable, and Bryan had seen murderers get off with short sentences. He wondered if the family could endure a grueling trial while Norris was still undergoing surgeries and battling cancer.
Bryan proposed a plea bargain: What if McGirt plead guilty and got 25 years in prison? The family left the decision to Norris. He accepted the deal. Beth Norris spoke for her dad at the sentencing. She stared coldly at McGirt, challenged him to look at her dad's face. "I hope you see it every day and every night."
McGirt stared at the courtroom floor as nearly every person in the courtroom cried, including McGirt's mother. After the sentencing, she walked up to the Norris family and hugged them. Through tears, she apologized for her son. "I did not raise him that way."
McGirt was sent to Lieber prison in Ridgeville. He'll be eligible for parole in 2025, the year he turns 41. Norris, now 67, says he forgives McGirt and even talks of meeting him someday.
But for now, Norris focuses on the simple things, such as eating. His injury forced his wife to puree his food because he can't chew or swallow anything thicker than grits. Sometimes the food got stuck on the way down and he panicked because it reminded him of the day he almost drowned in his own blood.
Norris was hopeful he could eat normally again; maybe, someday, eat a steak. But last week his recovery took a turn: He was losing too much weight, and doctors ordered him back on a feeding tube.
Beth Norris sees the cancer devouring her dad's strength and wonders if he'll get that steak. She prays he has enough time.
The series
This is the final day in a four-part series about a 2003 shooting.
The story so far
DAY 1: Doc Norris came home for lunch to find Franklin Lee McGirt burglarizing his house. McGirt told Norris he wasn't leaving a witness and shot Norris in the face at close range with a hunting rifle. McGirt fled, leaving Norris for dead.
DAY 2: Norris clung to life as authorities desperately tried to find the man who shot him. His pastor stood quietly in a corner of the emergency room at Georgetown Memorial Hospital, praying that Norris would pass peacefully into the next life.
DAY 3: Norris' heart gave out twice as ambulance and helicopter paramedics struggled to keep him alive until doctors and nurses at the Medical University of South Carolina could put him into a chemically induced coma and stabilize his condition.
For 3 years, team works to rebuild what was lost
MUSC head and neck surgeon Terry Day and facial reconstruction surgeon Adam Ross worked with a team of specialists, nurses, nutritionists, speech pathologists, therapists, dental experts and others to rebuild Doc Norris? face and help him to talk, eat and breathe well again. Today, three years after the shooting, Norris keeps regular medical appointments in Charleston and Georgetown. But surgeons postponed Norris? final facial reconstruction surgeries while he battles bone cancer. Surgeon Terry Day
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Ron Menchaca, reporter for the Charleston Post & Courier has agreed to forward all cards and well wishes to Mr. Norris. Lets all send a christmas card to Mr. Norris to show him our support. I would think get well cards would also be appropriate.
Send cards and best wishes to:
Doc Norris
c/o Ron Menchaca, Reporter
Charleston Post & Courier
134 Columbus St.
Charleston, S.C. 29403
BY RON MENCHACA
Franklin Lee McGirt scanned the rows of tidy, working-class homes as he wandered down Nu Shell Street on the outskirts of Georgetown. A petty thief looking for his next target.
Around lunchtime on May 12, 2003, a woman doing yard work saw McGirt on her neighbor's porch and asked what he wanted. He said he was interested in mowing her neighbor's lawn. She noticed the lawn didn't need mowing and hollered for her husband. McGirt bolted, leaving behind the front door with its weather stripping half pulled away.
He showed up a few blocks away on Missroon Street, and checked out a new burglary mark: a tan double-wide with green shutters.
McGirt crept up to the back of the house through a patch of dense woods. He yanked a ceramic birdbath from the yard and used its steel support rod to pry open the back door. A yapping schnauzer met him inside. He threatened the dog, and it scampered outside.
Moving quickly through the house, McGirt threw open drawers and cabinets. He'd broken into enough homes to know where folks usually kept jewelry and valuables. He pulled a blue suitcase from beneath the bed in the master bedroom and began filling it with silverware.
A wooden cabinet in a corner of the master bedroom caught his eye. Opening it, his gaze fixed on a lever-action hunting rifle with a black telescope. He rummaged through some drawers, found boxes of cartridges and loaded the rifle. He carried the rifle at his side as he continued through the house.
Then he froze at the sound of jangling keys at the front door. Doc Norris unlocked the front door of his tan double-wide and stepped inside. He worked as an electrician, and his wiring job that morning was nearby. So he drove home to eat lunch and let his dog out. But his schnauzer, Heidi, who always jumped and barked when Norris' keys clinked at the front door, didn't come running. Perhaps Norris' daughter, Beth, who lived next door, had already come over to let the dog out. She happened to be home that day doing spring cleaning.
Norris paused in his living room to pick up the cordless phone from the end table. Behind him, the glossy eyes in a mounted deer head kept watch.
He shot the deer on a hunting trip a few years back, sighting it in the crosshairs of a black telescope mounted on his lever-action .30-30 rifle.
Norris headed to the master bedroom to use the bathroom, passing a blue suitcase that lay open on the bed. Normally it was kept underneath.
He raised the phone to his ear to call his daughter as he walked back through the living room toward the kitchen, his mind on eating lunch. McGirt eased toward the footsteps, the rifle clutched across his lanky body. He paused in the kitchen and aimed the rifle at the sound coming toward him.
McGirt had recently been let out of prison after serving time on a burglary conviction. Prosecutors had cut him a break, and he was sentenced under a more lenient youthful offender law. He served a little more than a year and was back on the streets before his 19th birthday.
He wasted little time getting back to old habits. Police suspected him in a recent rash of break-ins, including one at a local church. He broke into one house so frequently that the homeowner set up a video camera and recorded McGirt making a bee-line for the change jar.
He told court officials that he drank heavily, smoked marijuana and dealt crack cocaine. He said that he grew up watching men physically abuse women. He boasted that he beat up girlfriends and killed litters of kittens with a shovel handle. "I still like killing stuff," he bragged.
McGirt's parents divorced when he was a toddler, and he grew into his teens bouncing between the homes of family and friends. Burglary outbreaks moved with him. The break-ins often occurred in blue-collar neighborhoods where most of the residents worked during the day. He didn't count on them coming home for lunch.
Norris walked out of the master bedroom and started dialing his daughter's number to see if she knew where his dog was. As he neared the kitchen, he saw a man and the barrel of his hunting rifle pointed at him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Norris demanded. "What does it look like I'm doing?" McGirt replied. They stared at each other for a moment, 6 feet apart. Norris offered the money in his pocket. He told McGirt to keep the rifle and to go, please. "I'm not going to leave a witness," McGirt said.
An explosion and a blast of fire erupted. The bullet smashed into Norris' face.
McGirt sprinted with the rifle out the back door and into the woods.
Norris tumbled onto a chair and his limp body rolled onto the blue carpet. Blood gushed from a void where his chin and neck had been.
About this series
This is the first day of a 4-part series. To tell the story, Post and Courier reporter Ron Menchaca used interviews and court, police and medical records. Contact him at (843) 937-5724 or rmenchaca@postandcourier.com.
http://www.charleston.net/assets/web...Date=12/3/2006
========================================
PART 2
Daughter's worst nightmare
Emergency workers scramble, a pastor prays and a gunshot victim's life hangs in the balance
BY RON MENCHACA
It takes just minutes to bleed to death. The blue living room carpet turned purple as blood spilled from Doc Norris' mutilated face. A bloody cordless phone lay on the floor. Next door, his daughter Beth Norris busied herself with spring cleaning. She did not hear the shot over the whir of her vacuum cleaner. But the blinking red light on the telephone caught her attention. The caller ID told her it was from her parents' house. She picked up the phone and heard gurgling. "Daddy, what's wrong?" She feared her father was having a heart attack. Running next door, she screamed into the phone. "Daddy, I'm coming."
She threw open the front door of the house. Her dad was doubled over in the living room, clawing at a chair. Blood covered everything. Beth knew CPR, but the shot from the hunting rifle blew away her dad's mouth. Diving to the floor, she heaved her dad's limp body to her chest. Norris' body writhed, his feet kicked and his arms flailed. She wrestled to keep him still while forcing her hand into the void of his face to clench the spurting blood vessels. She fumbled with the phone in her other hand and reached a neighbor, who called 911.
The emergency dispatch call went out over the radio as a suicide attempt. An ambulance sped toward Missroon Street. Medics rushed inside and tried to make sense of the injury through the rush of blood spilling onto the floor. It was the type of wound usually seen on a battlefield.
Paramedics did all they could as the ambulance sirens wailed down the highway toward Georgetown Memorial Hospital, but they were sure they were carrying a corpse. Seconds later, the heart monitor wired to Norris flatlined. He'd lost so much blood.
l l
Franklin Lee McGirt's heart pounded as he darted through the woods. He sprinted to a friend's house and bummed a ride to a store along the highway. As they drove, he could see police cars and an ambulance careening toward Missroon Street. He'd committed dozens of burglaries over the years, but none had escalated to such violence.
Neighbors gathered in the street. They shook their heads and wiped their eyes as deputies strung crime scene tape around the house. Inside, investigators pieced together the clues: A box of rifle cartridges dumped out. A blue suitcase open on the bed and filled with prescription medicines and silverware. Blood and chunks of flesh splattered on the walls. Shards of dentures scattered on the blue carpet. A hunting rifle missing from the gun cabinet in the master bedroom.
Detectives zeroed in on a splintered section of door framing between the kitchen and the living room. They traced the trajectory of a bullet and ruled out suicide. Beth Norris wanted to be in the ambulance with her father, but investigators kept her at the house for questioning. They asked if she had any reason to want him dead. She muttered responses as best she could. But she had trouble answering as the blood on her clothes and skin began to dry, and she felt like vomiting. Deputies tested her hands for gunshot residue and searched her house before letting her follow her father to the hospital.
Investigators' suspicion turned to an intruder. It appeared to be a botched burglary. They discovered a fresh footprint in the woods behind Norris' house. A team of bloodhounds sniffed out more tracks nearby until the trail turned cold.
McGirt wore gloves during the break-in, so investigators found no fingerprints. But if they could find the shoe that made the imprints in the dirt, that would be nearly as valuable.
Georgetown County Sheriff A. Lane Cribb cleared the decks and told his deputies and investigators that solving this crime would be their top priority. He feared residents would panic as news spread that the shooter had gotten away and was armed.
l l l
The Rev. Brad Morris arrived at the hospital in time to see paramedics wheel in his parishioner. But the man on the gurney was unrecognizable. Morris peered through the window of the emergency room where doctors and nurses swirled around Norris. A doctor came out, sullen. "Are you a minister?" Morris replied with a soft "yes." "You need to get in there. You can do more for him now than we can." Morris walked into the room and took a spot in the corner, bowed his head, squeezed his eyes tight and prayed. "God, please take care of him in the passage from life to death."
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PART 3
Intense, urgent manhunt
Authorities feared Franklin McGirt would shoot someone else with rifle stolen from Doc Norris
BY RON MENCHACA
Tubes and wires snaked across Doc Norris' chest and what remained of his face. If doctors had any chance to save him, they knew, they had to get him to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, the closest hospital capable of treating his catastrophic gunshot wound.
Judy Norris, who had been at work when her husband was shot, rushed into the Georgetown Memorial Hospital emergency ward and begged to see him. The Rev. Brad Morris, the Norrises' pastor, blocked her. He did not want her to see the gaping hole where her husband's jaw and chin had been. The lips she knew in kisses were gone.
Norris' grasp on life slipped as a trauma helicopter lifted off from Georgetown for the 50-mile trip down the coast to Charleston. In mid-flight his heart stopped, but medics resuscitated him shortly before the helicopter descended to MUSC, where doctors and nurses readied a trauma room.
l l l
At dawn, the morning after the shooting, the morning after she'd used her hands to clamp the spurting arteries in her father's neck, Beth Norris gassed up the lawn mower to cut the grass.
Then she braced herself for the grisly task of cleaning up the room where a burglar shot her dad. As she scrubbed the blood splatter and hunks of flesh from the walls, her strokes grew faster and more vigorous and her mind filled with anger.
News of the shooting traveled fast, terrifying Georgetown residents. Deputies and investigators fanned across the county following tips and tapping informants. One name kept surfacing: Franklin Lee McGirt, a known petty burglar.
They plastered his mug shot on "Wanted" posters and hung them around the county. The Georgetown Times blasted a front-page headline - "Suspect identified in shooting" - over a mug shot of McGirt. Judy Norris stared at the photo of the man in the newspaper. He looked so young.
Investigators feared McGirt would shoot again to avoid being sent back to prison. They chased every lead as the case grew more urgent with each passing day. One tip had McGirt trying to flee to Connecticut on a Greyhound bus. Another said he tried to pawn the hunting rifle he used to shoot Norris. A search of a house where McGirt was said to be hiding came up empty.
McGirt did not behave like a fugitive. He brazenly walked along the railroad tracks outside the city holding the rifle, and he broke into at least one more house. He showed off the rifle to friends and concocted a story about how he'd run from Norris' house ducking bullets. He even carried his stolen rifle down to the banks of the Sampit River for target practice. As he fired, the recoil forced the hard black scope back into McGirt's forehead, leaving a nasty bruise.
Despite McGirt's frequent outdoor excursions, investigators did not get a break until a tipster revealed McGirt was hiding out at a friend's house in the nearby town of Andrews. In the early morning darkness, a SWAT team and a task force of officers and deputies from several surrounding jurisdictions raided the hideout, an old boat stored behind a house. McGirt was already gone, but in his haste he left behind a pair of black-and-white Nike shoes. Their size 8 1/2 footprint resembled an imprint that investigators discovered in the dirt behind Norris' house after the shooting.
Nearly a week into the manhunt, McGirt grew exhausted and paranoid. He knew police were closing in and he was tired of running. Early one morning, McGirt's mother and an aunt drove him to the Georgetown County Detention Center, where he turned himself in. Investigators could not believe their luck. A videotape of the interrogation started rolling just before 2 p.m. on May 19, 2003, almost exactly a week since McGirt shot Norris.
At first, McGirt was evasive and cocky with investigators. He clung to a weak alibi and said he didn't know anything about a break-in on Missroon Street. Desperate to get the rifle off the street, investigators grew impatient: "We need you to tell us where the gun is before somebody else gets hurt. I promise you if a child gets hurt by that gun, you'll go to the electric chair."
The physical toll of a week on the run drained McGirt. He puffed a cigarette to calm his jangled nerves. Where's the rifle, Frankie? Why did you shoot him, Frankie? Finally, he cracked: "I didn't even look at him. I just pulled the trigger."
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PART 4 - FINAL
Long and painful journey stretches on
Doc Norris struggles to regain sense of normalcy
BY RON MENCHACA
The Post and Courier
Doc Norris was alive. His condition finally stabilized a couple of weeks after the shooting. Now, the struggle to rebuild his face - and his life - began.
Underneath long white coils of bandages, the lower half of his face hung in tatters, his lower lip, chin and the remaining stub of his tongue barely discernible. The sides of his jaw hung with no connecting bone in the middle.
He breathed through one tube and ate through another. His eyes spoke of sadness and pain.
Weeks would pass before Norris stabilized enough to undergo the first of nearly two dozen facial-reconstruction surgeries. Some procedures spanned several hours as surgeons deftly blended art and
A titanium plate filled the gap between the floating hinges of his jaw, while skin and bone grafted from his shoulder blades formed a new chin.
But the new layers of skin looked thick and unnatural, so surgeons performed frequent follow-up surgeries to cut open the bulk and scoop and burn away the extra tissue. If they cut a millimeter too deep, the fragile transplanted tissue would die and the painstaking rebuilding process would have started all over.
No medical manuals existed to guide them through the complexities of re-creating and shaping Norris' lower lip, which after countless surgeries stubbornly held a deep crease that acted like a spout on a pitcher of water and caused him to drool.
Each grueling operation left Norris' face swollen and throbbing. Massive doses of morphine deadened the pain of phantom nerve endings, but the steady drug fix formed an addiction, and Norris soon added detox to his torturous journey.
Norris spent nearly three months confined to a hospital bed in Charleston before he was able to return home to Georgetown, where he faced new challenges.
His home haunted him. At night, he bolted awake in bed, soaking wet. The nightmares repeated the same scene: He confronts a stranger in the kitchen. An explosion. Unfathomable pain.
Even his dog, Heidi, could not forget. Heidi would not go near the back door where Franklin Lee McGirt forced his way inside, and when the dog trotted through the living room, she arced around the spot on the blue carpet where Norris nearly bled to death. The family tried to get the blood out but finally had to replace the stained section.
Crippling self-consciousness enveloped Norris when he ventured out in public. He felt like a baby when saliva spilled from his mouth. Like a child clutching a security blanket, he toted a white towel with him everywhere to swipe at the spittle. People stared when the family went into the city, and Norris knew his appearance made people uncomfortable.
Norris' family shuttled him between Georgetown and Charleston for countless surgeries and speech therapy sessions.
Counselors helped him quell the hate in his heart. But for a while he despised all young black men, even though his Bible and his pastor told him that was wrong. When investigators returned Norris' rifle, his family kept it from him because they feared he would harm himself.
Coming home also meant confronting medical bills that would grow to nearly $1 million. Payments from a state victims' fund quickly ran out, and Social Security denied Norris' request for dentures to replace the set that was blown to bits in the shooting. The hospitals wrote off all the bills they could.
His church and churches he did not attend took up collections for the family. The local diner where Norris used to sip coffee in a worn booth placed a donation jar on the lunch counter. A local motorcycle club organized a charity ride.
In a search for normalcy, Norris climbed a ladder to make a home repair. He fell and broke his collarbone. Doctors treating the injury discovered bone cancer. In the midst of his recovery and the reconstruction surgeries, Norris added radiation and chemotherapy treatments to his calendar.
* * *
About one year after the shooting, with McGirt's trial set to begin, deputy solicitor Bo Bryan felt good about his case. But juries can be unpredictable, and Bryan had seen murderers get off with short sentences. He wondered if the family could endure a grueling trial while Norris was still undergoing surgeries and battling cancer.
Bryan proposed a plea bargain: What if McGirt plead guilty and got 25 years in prison? The family left the decision to Norris. He accepted the deal. Beth Norris spoke for her dad at the sentencing. She stared coldly at McGirt, challenged him to look at her dad's face. "I hope you see it every day and every night."
McGirt stared at the courtroom floor as nearly every person in the courtroom cried, including McGirt's mother. After the sentencing, she walked up to the Norris family and hugged them. Through tears, she apologized for her son. "I did not raise him that way."
McGirt was sent to Lieber prison in Ridgeville. He'll be eligible for parole in 2025, the year he turns 41. Norris, now 67, says he forgives McGirt and even talks of meeting him someday.
But for now, Norris focuses on the simple things, such as eating. His injury forced his wife to puree his food because he can't chew or swallow anything thicker than grits. Sometimes the food got stuck on the way down and he panicked because it reminded him of the day he almost drowned in his own blood.
Norris was hopeful he could eat normally again; maybe, someday, eat a steak. But last week his recovery took a turn: He was losing too much weight, and doctors ordered him back on a feeding tube.
Beth Norris sees the cancer devouring her dad's strength and wonders if he'll get that steak. She prays he has enough time.
The series
This is the final day in a four-part series about a 2003 shooting.
The story so far
DAY 1: Doc Norris came home for lunch to find Franklin Lee McGirt burglarizing his house. McGirt told Norris he wasn't leaving a witness and shot Norris in the face at close range with a hunting rifle. McGirt fled, leaving Norris for dead.
DAY 2: Norris clung to life as authorities desperately tried to find the man who shot him. His pastor stood quietly in a corner of the emergency room at Georgetown Memorial Hospital, praying that Norris would pass peacefully into the next life.
DAY 3: Norris' heart gave out twice as ambulance and helicopter paramedics struggled to keep him alive until doctors and nurses at the Medical University of South Carolina could put him into a chemically induced coma and stabilize his condition.
For 3 years, team works to rebuild what was lost
MUSC head and neck surgeon Terry Day and facial reconstruction surgeon Adam Ross worked with a team of specialists, nurses, nutritionists, speech pathologists, therapists, dental experts and others to rebuild Doc Norris? face and help him to talk, eat and breathe well again. Today, three years after the shooting, Norris keeps regular medical appointments in Charleston and Georgetown. But surgeons postponed Norris? final facial reconstruction surgeries while he battles bone cancer. Surgeon Terry Day
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Ron Menchaca, reporter for the Charleston Post & Courier has agreed to forward all cards and well wishes to Mr. Norris. Lets all send a christmas card to Mr. Norris to show him our support. I would think get well cards would also be appropriate.
Send cards and best wishes to:
Doc Norris
c/o Ron Menchaca, Reporter
Charleston Post & Courier
134 Columbus St.
Charleston, S.C. 29403
