By
Hillary Davis
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Jeff Knepper, 19, will file a claim against the city within a month, wear a prosthetic eye by August
Like many UA students, Jeff Knepper rooted for the Arizona Wildcats as they played in the NCAA basketball title game on April 2. Then he went to join the crowd that had gathered along North Fourth Avenue to celebrate, despite the team's loss to Duke.
But unlike other students, Knepper, a 19-year-old business freshman, must now see the world through one eye after a police officer, trying to quell the ensuing riot, struck him in the face with a "less-lethal" round.
Knepper is planning to file a claim against the city for his injury - the most serious suffered by anybody hit by the police projectiles that night. Yesterday, he described the events from his perspective.
After watching the game at the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house on campus, where he is a member, Knepper headed out to North Fourth Avenue, where a boisterous but "happy" crowd had gathered.
"I heard that there was stuff going on," Knepper said. "I wanted to see what's up."
Knepper met up with three friends, and the group observed the cheering masses of people that had congregated in the North Fourth Avenue-East Eighth Street intersection. Knepper said he was not intoxicated that night, and he and his companions stayed along the fringe of the activity.
By about 10 p.m., Knepper and his friends decided to return home after people's behavior began turning criminal. Knepper said he did not leave the area earlier because he didn't think he was in any danger. He also said he did not hear the police order to disperse.
By the end of the night, rioters had turned over cars, torched a street vendor's motor home and looted and smashed windows of nearby businesses, causing as much as $20,000 in damages to the stores. Seventeen people were arrested for misdemeanors, including seven University of Arizona students.
"We had talked about it as a group. Somebody said, 'It's time to get out of here, it's time to go,'" he said. "You could see the police farther down on Fourth lining up. You could see it was getting out of hand."
Knepper began walking east on East Eighth Street, east of the main Fourth Avenue activity, toward campus. He had become separated from his friends and was walking alone when police began firing the first rounds of crowd-suppressing, "less-lethal" projectiles.
"As I was walking away, I could hear the noises, and started to hurry up a bit," Knepper said.
However, curiosity changed Knepper's life.
When he turned his head to the left to catch a glimpse of the commotion, a lead-filled bean bag bloodied his face, stunning him.
"It felt like a pop, sort of. It didn't even hurt. It was a weird sensation," he said. "I went down and I could see the blood coming out. But it still didn't hurt that bad."
Knepper said two or three college-aged women stopped to aid him. One called 911 on her cellular phone, but when she was told that an ambulance could not enter the barricaded-off district, she and the other women walked Knepper to a fire truck about a block and a half away, holding a sweatshirt to his bleeding face and propping his head.
Although he was too stressed to remember anything about the women who helped him, Knepper said he would like to find them so he can thank them.
"I don't know what would have happened if they hadn't helped," he said. "I didn't know how bad it was. I probably would have kept going."
Once he arrived at the fire truck, firefighters wrapped his injury with gauze and called for an ambulance.
After waking from his pre-dawn emergency surgery, Knepper found out from a nurse that University Medical Center doctors could not save his eye. Surgeons had extracted fragments of lead and pieces of the fabric that surrounded the pellet.
"I was still all groggy, and I sort of didn't believe it at first. It was the worst thing I'd ever heard," he said.
Although he said he is not angry, Knepper said he feels disappointed, and would like answers from the police.
"You're wondering what the officer was thinking, what he was told, why he aimed for the head - what's the deal," he said. "It just wasn't fair. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was leaving. I didn't deserve it."
Knepper said he was not walking through a dense crowd when he was shot, and that everybody around him was also headed back to campus, not engaging in any criminal activity.
A Tucson Police officer interviewed Knepper two days after the incident, but he has not had any contact with the police department since then. The officer who shot Knepper has not been identified.
Knepper has not attended classes since the injury, and is trying to coordinate incomplete and withdrawing grades with his instructors. He said supportive friends and university officials have also helped with his recovery.
Within the next few weeks, a plastic surgeon will repair Knepper's eyelid, and he should have a prosthetic eye in place before the start of the fall semester.
"Doctors tell me it should look fine, and everything should be OK, and I'm going to go with that," he said. "It's not a great experience now, but you may as well make the most of it."
A patch of gauze covers his damaged eyelid and the rounded object - resembling a pupil-less, iris-less brown eye - doctors inserted into the socket to hold the shape. Knepper said he could not bear to look at his face without the patch until last week.
"Yeah, it was my eye, and OK, (now) it's gone," he said. "It kind of hits home when you look in the mirror, and it isn't there."
Carl Piccaretta, Knepper's lawyer, said he will file a claim against the city within the next 30 days. The claim will give Knepper an opportunity to settle with the city without a lawsuit.
However, Piccaretta said a lawsuit is likely, but he added that he would be surprised to see it go to trial.
Seven other people who were struck by "less-lethal" police rounds have filed complaints against the police department.
