ST. LOUIS — Tom Townsend is a retired advertising executive and non-profit co-founder. And now, if you want to call him a miracle man, he won’t argue with you. A violent attempted carjacking left him wondering if he was going to die.
“I went from ‘I'm dying,’ to ‘I can't believe this guy shot me before I even gave him the car,'” said Townsend from his condo art studio across from Forest Park.
The art studio is practically the scene of the crime. Two months ago, September 18, Townsend had come to his studio for some after-midnight painting. While sitting in his car outside talking on the phone, his world almost came to an end at the hands of an armed carjacker.
“My attention was taken by the butt of a gun banging on the passenger side windshield and a voice saying ‘out of the car.’ At that point I realized this was a carjacking,” said Townsend. “We all know by now how to behave during a carjacking. You give up the car. Before I could give up the car he had made his way around to the side passenger driver's side window and just shot me through that window.”
The bullet entered the side of his jaw, destroying his lower teeth, and exited the back of his neck.
“Running into a building next door for help, I was a frightening sight. I mean, I had blood all over me. I was a scary character in that moment to other people,” said Townsend. “I kind of went out into Skinker and started trying to flag down cars. And finally, an ambulance came. I jumped in the back of it myself and said, ‘I'm the guy you’re here for.'”
Miraculously, the bullet missed critical blood vessels and nerves. Townsend can see and hear without any brain damage.
”People have used that word a lot, ‘miraculous recovery’ and that kind of thing,” said Townsend. “I have all my faculties except for my mouth and voice right now. So there's no question in my mind that, statistically speaking, I shouldn't be able to sit here and talk with you like this.”
Because the attempted carjacking happened outside the building where his art studio is, it would be understandable if Townsend might be hesitant to go back, but he refuses to let a carjacker take that away from him. While hospitalized, before he could talk, he wrote on an erasable whiteboard that he wanted a quick return to his studio.
“One of the first things that I wanted to do coming out of that deep sleep for those days, I always go back to where I was going that night and be in my environment and paint,” said Townsend.
Townsend is a retired advertising executive from Rodgers Townsend agency. When his son Alex, a piano player like his dad, was killed in a car accident in 2010, Townsend co-founded Pianos for People. The non-profit refurbishes donated pianos and gives them away along with free lessons. As someone who tries to help young people discover music and improve their lives, he hopes the young man who shot him can turn around his life.
“You’re young, don’t make dumb mistakes,” said Townsend to his assailant. “I'm not angry. I'm supposed to be, but I'm really not.”
Townsend’s recovery includes more surgeries, to replace his lower teeth, and skin and bone grafts.
