EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsTALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- There is still a bullet in Ethan Pritchard's head.Seventy-one shots were fired at his Dodge Charger last August and 70 missed. The one that hit him was fired from close range as he put his car in reverse to protect his aunt and his 3-year-old niece in the back seat.Pritchard says he believes he glimpsed the next life while he was in a coma for 30 days. He recalls a vision he had of his late mother, late aunt and Jesus. He remembers running toward them, but as he got closer, they got farther away. Pritchard can still hear his mother saying, "It's not your time." Then he opened his eyes.These days, he tries not to think too much about why this all happened. He knows that if he dwells on all the small things that could have spared him that day, it will do no good. He was in a dark place when he was thinking that way, right after he woke up from his coma, when he couldn't move or talk or do anything but blink. So now, he keeps his mind on the future. He thinks about playing football again at Florida State."Maybe it happened for a reason," Pritchard says. "What I'm doing now -- it's going to be something for the world to watch."SOMETIMES, FOR JUST a split second, Pritchard forgets the bullet is there. He thinks about what life was like before, on the morning of Aug. 31, 2025. Florida State had completed its usual Sunday practice, and Pritchard had impressed the coaching staff -- making plays all over the field.The previous day, Florida State had beaten Alabama 31-17 to open the 2025 season, a victory that sent fans storming onto the field and the team into a raucous celebration that lasted into the night. Pritchard had suited up but did not play, a true freshman waiting his turn.For his family, the day meant triumph beyond the scoreboard. Ethan was born in Tallahassee and his parents, Earl and Andrea, both grew up in Havana, about 30 minutes away. Andrea attended Florida State and had big dreams for her son. On Christmas Day in 2008, Earl heard a loud thump while Andrea was taking a shower. He found her unresponsive, the shower still running. She had died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 30. Ethan was just 18 months old. As Ethan grew up, he set his sights on playing at Florida State, hoping to carry forward her legacy.After Andrea died, Earl sent Ethan to live with his two sisters in Sanford, Florida, near Orlando, while he figured out how to start over. He joined them six months later. Ethan grew attached to his aunts, who became mother figures to him. They delighted in watching him grow from an independent little boy who never let anyone carry his backpack into one of the best football players in Central Florida.Ethan's dad was his everything. Earl went to every game, took him on every recruiting visit, got him whatever he needed so he could play Division I football. When Ethan committed to Florida State in 2023, it felt as if he were with family. Even through a down year for the program in 2024, Ethan never wavered in his commitment to be a Seminole.Earl was at the opener against Alabama, sitting to the right of the band along with a few other family members, and vividly remembers him running out of the tunnel."To see him in that first game, everything he worked for, it was one of the best feelings in the world. Like he won the lottery," Earl Pritchard says. "Just to see him out there dancing, enjoying the crowd, enjoying the win, celebrating with the boys, knowing it's going to go further after that."In Havana, the rest of the family had a watch party. Zealene Lawrence, an aunt who helped raise Ethan, said there were between 50 to 60 people at her daughter's house wearing Pritchard jerseys as they watched for him on the sideline.They planned a big barbeque at Pritchard's uncle's house in Havana the next day to celebrate. After the football team dinner, Ethan told Florida State head coach Mike Norvell he was going to see his family. He left Tallahassee in his silver 2023 Dodge Charger to make a drive he had made hundreds of times in his life, north about 18 miles on U.S. 27.As he passed the Havana Heights apartment complex, three blocks from his uncle's house, multiple gunmen mistook his car for a different 2023 Dodge Charger they had been targeting and waited for it to come back.THE PARTY AT his uncle's house was in full swing when Ethan arrived, complete with a DJ, food, games and inflatable water slides for the kids. As soon as Ethan pulled up, his family ran out to greet him, taking pictures, hugging him and congratulating him on the game."I was feeling good," Ethan said. "We just came off a good win. Just a joyful, joyful moment."At around 9 p.m., Ethan was getting ready to leave. His aunt and 3-year-old niece wanted to leave, too, so he offered them a ride home, about two miles away. As they pulled up to a four-way stop in front of the Havana Heights apartments, Ethan turned to his aunt and asked, "Should I go straight or left?" Either route would get them home. His aunt told him to turn left so she could check on her sister's house on the next corner.As he started his left turn, Ethan saw somebody jump in front of the car."My first thing I thought of was my auntie and my niece," Pritchard says.He remembers his aunt screaming, "Go! Go! Go!""A barrage of bullets just started hitting the windshield," Lawrence recalls. "I wasn't looking because I was talking to my granddaughter in the backseat. She was like, 'Look at the fireworks.' As I turned to look, the glass went, shattering the windshield. By that time, Ethan was already hit."Ethan had put the car in reverse to try to get away from the bullets."I can still hear them screaming," Ethan says. "I can hear my little niece in the back, she's crying. You ever been stuck and you were aware of what's going on but you can't do nothing? I wasn't in pain. I just went black, like slowly, slowly, slowly."The gunmen kept shooting as Ethan slumped over onto Lawrence's shoulder, blood spilling everywhere. As he lost consciousness, his foot hit the gas and they sped backward. The bullets kept coming. The car hit a shed and was impaled by a wooden beam. The gunfire finally stopped. Lawrence blacked out briefly. The cries of her grandchild, unharmed in the back seat, brought her back. Lawrence screamed Ethan's name, but he did not respond.She held him close and kept telling him, "I got you."Months later, after he regained his ability to speak, Ethan called his aunt. He needed to know one thing."Tell me," he said. "Did I save y'all?"Lawrence, recounting the conversation through tears, told him, "Yes. You saved us, and I thank you for saving us.""I just wanted you to know that I did my best for you," he said.Lawrence did her best, too. After the car hit the shed, she picked up her phone.A few blocks away at his uncle's house, someone shouted, "Turn the music down! There's a shooting! Don't you hear the gunshots?"Lawrence called Earl to tell him Ethan had been shot. He jumped into his car and, within a minute, was at the intersection. The gunmen had already left. There were no streetlights in the area, and because Ethan's car had slammed into the shed, Earl could not easily find them. He pulled up his sister's location on his phone and finally saw the car.Earl's heart dropped. He could see his son through the windshield, covered with blood, laid out, unconscious. But he had no way to get to him. Because of the way the car hit the shed, the doors were pinned shut. Earl and two family members got on top of the hood and frantically started kicking at the windshield to break it. He then got on top of the car to try to break the pole that had impaled the car while yelling for Ethan.Finally, the paramedics arrived. They got Ethan out of the car and removed his clothes as they checked for injuries. His breathing was labored, so they immediately intubated him to open his airway and to buy some time before they arrived at the hospital. Earl begged to ride in the ambulance with his son, but the paramedics told him that was not allowed.Earl, overcome with anger, desperately banged on the doors of the ambulance to let him in. When the paramedics refused, he had to get into his car and make the 30-minute drive to Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, praying the entire way."Don't let my son die."NORVELL HAD JUST arrived home when he got a phone call from Corey Fuller, the team's director of football relations."Coach," he said. "A player got shot."Before Norvell could ask who, Earl Pritchard was calling on the other line."It's not good," Earl said.Norvell and several Florida State staff members got to the hospital before Earl. When he saw Earl come in, he wrapped him in a hug. Norvell and the Florida State contingent huddled together with the Pritchard family, awaiting news from doctors in the emergency room."We could actually see shards of bone and bullet that had entered his skull at that time on our CT scan," said Dr. G. Patton Pennington, a trauma surgeon at TMH who was on Ethan's care team. "It was in a very difficult place. There was no need to go take it out. It's one of those things [where] you can cause more damage trying to take it out."Rather than take the bullet out, doctors induced a coma and placed a bolt in Ethan's head to monitor the pressure in his brain. All they could do was wait to see how he responded."In my experience of doing this, he had a grim prognosis," Pennington said. "I couldn't guarantee that Ethan was going to do well over the next 12 to 24 hours. I wasn't sure if he was going to make it out of the hospital."Earl was able to see his son after they placed the bolt in his head, tubes and wires crisscrossing his body, a ventilator breathing for him. He looked at his boy in disbelief. Earl and Ethan were inseparable. Best friends. Always together. After Andrea died, he vowed to do everything in his power to keep Ethan safe, to keep him on the right path. How could a bullet have found him anyway?"A feeling that you don't wish on nobody," Earl said of looking at his son. "Having to be there and see it? Indescribable. Seeing him lying there helpless. You're supposed to help your kids, but nothing you can do. I prayed more than I ever prayed in my life."Norvell held Ethan's hand, his eyes welling with tears."You see him breathing, but I just watched him play," Norvell said. "Now he's sitting there in a hospital ICU, fighting. That was a lot."Earl never left Ethan's side, sleeping next to him in the hospital room, while his family and Florida State staff and players crowded the waiting room, hoping for good news. Norvell came as often as he could, and when he was unable to, he called Earl multiple times a day for updates.When Earl needed a break, he would retreat into his car and yell. He felt anger more than sadness. He couldn't eat. He barely slept.After about four days, Ethan started to develop pneumonia in his lungs. Dr. Ruby Williams, a pulmonologist on Ethan's care team, said it was not uncommon for someone intubated with a brain injury to develop lung issues. The gunshot wound to the head no longer posed the greatest threat to his survival. She described his lungs as "nearly whited out" on X-ray images."Whited out means that there is material in the actual lung tissue that is preventing the lungs from working to get oxygen into the blood and pulling carbon dioxide out," Williams said. "When we saw this happening, it was devastating. At that point, he was at high risk for death from his respiratory failure."She put his chances of survival at less than 10%.Doctors had one last tool to use. They put Ethan on a form of life support called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), in which blood is pumped outside the body to a machine that removes the carbon dioxide and then returns oxygen-rich blood. At that point, Pennington said Ethan was "hour to hour.""His lungs were very dire," Pennington said. "TMH had pulled everything out of the box they had to treat somebody."ECMO is not a long-term solution. Doctors tried to wean him off of the life support to see whether he could handle breathing on his own, but within minutes his vitals dropped. It went this way for weeks, with no sign of improvement.Earl Pritchard recalls one doctor asking him whether he had considered the possibility of taking Ethan off of life support after days with no progress. Pennington and Williams were not there for that conversation. Lawrence said Earl grew irate, and needed to be calmed down."I don't want to hear that. That's when it got bad for me," Earl Pritchard said. "Give him whatever it is. You're not going to give up on my kid like that."Finally, after nearly three weeks on ECMO, there was a breakthrough. Ethan started to show improvement, little by little. Thirty days after he arrived at the hospital, he opened his eyes.Earl, sitting by his side, cried tears of joy.Even though Ethan could not speak, he wanted to ask the doctors whether he would be able to make a full recovery. They gave him a board with the alphabet, and he pointed at letters with his eyes to spell out his question."They told me straight up, it's going to be on you," Ethan says. "However much work you put in, that's what it's going to be. From that day forward, that's all I needed to hear. I know what I'm capable of. I know what I'm willing to do. So, if it's on me, I know I'm going to be good."Thirty-nine days after he was shot, on Oct. 9, 2025, Ethan was released from the hospital. He had lost 60 pounds from his 225-pound linebacker frame. He still could only open and close his eyes, and had limited movement on his left side. But he knew in time he would be able to do more. In his mind, he'd already beaten death. Making his body strong again? That would be the easy part. He told himself he would walk again.He told himself he would play football again.Norvell, Florida State players and staff and the Pritchard family, were there to greet him as he was wheeled out the front entrance and into a waiting ambulance to transport him to a rehab facility in Jacksonville.It was the first time doctors at TMH had successfully treated a patient with both a brain injury and lung failure."It is once in a lifetime that somebody with his devastating injuries survives this," Williams said.ON AUG. 29, minutes before the Florida State season opener against New Mexico State, Pritchard stands with Norvell in the back of the end zone, a black cane in his left hand, getting ready to walk onto the field. That bullet should have killed him. Instead, he found his way back to everything that was taken from him. He thinks about the green grass beneath him, the way he felt 364 days earlier, the last time he stood here on his own two feet.Norvell puts his arm around one of Ethan's shoulders and shakes his hand."You did it," Norvell says. "I'm so proud of you buddy. Let's go.""Let's do it," Ethan says.Three men are awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges in his shooting. Their next case management hearing is set for Oct. 1. Police have said the shooting was a case of mistaken identity, and Pritchard was in the "wrong place at the wrong time." The suspects were looking for a Dodge Charger in the same color that was associated with a drive-by shooting at the same apartment complex six days earlier.Earl takes out his phone and finds a photo of Ethan's car. He says he is grateful the gunmen did not know how to fire a gun properly, because if they did, Ethan would have taken more than one bullet. "If you look at that car, you would think it was worse. You wouldn't think nobody survived it," he says.Asked what he wants to happen to the men who did this to him, Ethan says, "Nothing. I just leave it in God's hands. He's got the last say."Ethan has regained nearly all his motor functions, a recovery his doctors call "miraculous." While at Brooks Rehabilitation in Jacksonville, he had to relearn how to do everything -- from feeding and cleaning himself, to holding a pencil, writing, talking and simply standing. After nearly two months, he was discharged and continued his recovery at home with physical therapists and outpatient rehab in Sanford."It was horrific, to say the least. But Ethan? Ethan came out still as pure gold," Lawrence said.Ethan was able to take online classes at Florida State in the spring and moved back to Tallahassee, to an apartment with stairs -- a way to challenge himself to get better. Over months working with staff at Brooks, his own trainers and Jerry Latimer, director of rehab at Florida State, Ethan was able to move from a wheelchair to a walker to a cane.On his 19th birthday in June, he left his walker aside and took a few steps without it. That same day, his grandmother gave him a ring that belonged to his mother. He put it on a necklace he wears with a boxing gloves charm, his daily reminders to keep fighting.He has recovered all of his upper body strength and is back up to 202 pounds. He can push sleds on the practice field, but the one part of his body that he cannot fully control is his right leg. He wears a brace around his calf that extends to his foot to allow him to walk. He does so with a limp.Because the bullet affected the part of his brain that controls motor function, there is no way to know whether his right leg will completely heal. But Latimer keeps focusing on strength, balance and mobility exercises to see if they can reestablish the neuromuscular connections to that part of his body."This is a condition where there is no protocol," Latimer said. "You keep going back to the well and working on the basics and the strength and the movement and the function, and you wait to see what you get."For now, walking on that field again is enough.As the public-address announcer says, "Leading your Seminoles out on the field today, linebacker No. 35 Ethan Pritchard!" he raises his cane in the air and walks without using it, to loud cheers and a standing ovation.Earl watches from the stands, as proud as he was a year earlier, when his son ran onto the field in full pads. He says he feels as if he won the lottery all over again.For Ethan, walking on the field was just one step. His long-term goal has not changed. He wants to play football again. If he is able to fully use his right leg again, Pennington said there is no medical reason to stop him."There's going to be nothing to hold Ethan, and I think he's proved that by how resilient he's been," Pennington said. "He beat the odds. He's better than anybody I've ever seen that suffered this kind of injury."Honestly, it's a miracle."
