Mother: Son 'literally saved my life'

• Rodrick Buckworth sings under the name %27El Rod%27 at community events

Patricia Buckworth lay on her bedroom floor, her abdomen burning where she had been shot.

A few feet away, her 19-year-old son, Rodrick, also was down, blood from two bullet wounds seeping into the tan carpet.

"This is not happening. This is a dream."

It wasn't Buckworth talking.

It was the voice of her neighbor, Jason Lee Brunson, 41 – the last words he spoke before he shot himself and collapsed over her.

The 40-year-old single mother pushed the man off her, rushed to her son and together the pair fled the Foxwood Apartments home where they've lived for eight years, Rodrick yelling for help as they ran outside.

Both were grateful to be alive, and together.

"We were born as singles, but we live as a pair," Rodrick told his mother as they waited for help in the parking lot.

It is likely he saved her life, rushing as he did to shield his mother when Brunson kicked their door open and began firing.

Brunson, a ground-floor tenant, took to his death whatever motive led to the June 10 rampage.

The two had encountered each other for the first time four days earlier in the hallway, where Brunson inexplicably accused her of being loud and making fun of him.

Close family

Violence is not a stranger to Rodrick Buckworth, who sings under the name "El Rod" at community events, trying to spread the message of respect and non-violence as a way of dealing with the murder of his 20-year-old cousin, Aunyea Marian Hawkins. She was killed by her estranged boyfriend, Leon K. Perkins, following a struggle in his Wilmington apartment in 2002. Perkins is serving a life sentence.

Rodrick was 7 when that happened. He credits his cousin's death, family and his mother's teachings for shaping him to be who he is and rise above violence.

"They inspired me," said Rodrick, who also runs track at Wesley College in Dover. "It was more my mom telling me that I could do that. Telling me that I could be that person people could look up to and people can talk to.

"I give the glory to my family."

That's why when "the devil" knocked on his door, Rodrick said, he knew he had to protect his mother.

He could have run into his room, which was on the way to hers, and escaped out a window. But, he said, then his mother wouldn't have known what was coming down the hallway.

"If I'd run out of that house without my mom, what kind of man would I have been?" he said. "I protect my mom first, disregard me. I put her before me any time, any day."

"He's smart, he's charismatic and he is my hero," his mother said. "I know he doesn't want to hear that part of it ... but not everybody would do that."

"He literally saved my life. You have people that say, 'Oh I love you so much. I'd take a bullet for you.' Well, he loved me so much he took two.

"Anybody who knows us, we're like bookends," she said.

"I believe he is my soulmate. He knows me better than anybody. He knows what I'm thinking before I say it. I could give him a look and he knows exactly what it means, and it doesn't have to be one of those mama looks either. He just knows me and vice versa."

The two have a way to go before they fully recover.

Patricia Buckworth, a receiving supervisor at Burlington Coat Factory, still has the bullet lodged in her abdomen. She can't stand or walk for long periods, much less lift heavy items. Last week, Rodrick wore bandages on his neck where one bullet passed through and a cast on his right forearm where another struck and fractured a bone.

The teen said he would like the wounds on his neck to heal before he returns to work at World Cafe Live at The Queen. At least that they look like scratches, he said, so he doesn't get a negative image.

The two started counseling on Thursday.

"I couldn't imagine this turning any way or the other – you know, me living without him, him living without me," she said.

Questions remain

New Castle County police spokesman Sgt. Jacob Andrews said investigators have no motive for the triple shooting.

Brunson, who'd lived at Foxwood for six to eight months, had no criminal record in Delaware. But he'd been convicted in Maryland of driving under the influence and a marijuana offense.

He also was arrested in April by North East, Maryland, police on a theft charge.

Brunson was charged with pawning at a New Castle shop a $1,600 camera stolen last year from a North East bar.

North East police Cpl. Bilton Morgan said Brunson surrendered to police after learning an arrest warrant had been issued for him.

He said Brunson told investigators he bought the camera from two people on the street wanting $100 for it. When Brunson learned of the camera's true value, he told police, he paid the pair $400 for it.

He pawned the camera because he needed money, he told officers. "That's how we found it," Morgan said. A trial date was scheduled for July.

Brunson also served in the Army from 1993 to 1997.

He had two children, according to his former wife of more than 15 years, Tina Brunson, who contacted The News Journal following the incident.

"As you can probably imagine, my family and I are truly devastated," she said in an email. "We are still grieving and mourning our loss, the loss of Jason. We are looking for answers as well. The truth is, we may never know the reason behind this tragedy."

Tina Brunson wanted the Buckworths to know she was sorry for their ordeal and wished them well on their road to recovery and healing.

In her email, she said she wanted to meet with them.

Patricia Buckworth said she was not ready to meet anyone related to her attacker.

"We need to deal with whatever mental health things that we need to deal with to get us to our new normal," she said. "To get us to our next step in life."

A sudden break-in

Contrary to speculation posted on social networks, Patricia Buckworth and Brunson were not in a relationship.

The two met June 6, when Patricia Buckworth and a friend were getting ready to go out for the night.

"We were on our way out to go to dinner – our normal ritual is I do her hair and we go out to dinner," she said, adding that they talked before leaving her apartment. "You know girlfriends, laughing, talking."

But when the women walked into the hallway, she said, they were met by Brunson and a woman. She recalled Brunson telling them, "You guys were making a lot of noise in there. You were really loud, I thought you were in the hallway. I think you were over there talking about us."

Patricia Buckworth said she'd never seen him before, let alone known about him to make fun of him.

When Brunson told the women he was an Army vet and showed a card identifying him as a disabled vet, Patricia Buckworth's friend thanked him for his service.

The man alluded to having mental health issues, Patricia Buckworth said, but she could not remember his exact words.

James A. Coty, spokesman at the Wilmington Veterans Affair Medical Center, declined to comment on whether Brunson was a patient.

"One veteran suicide is one too many," Coty said when asked about Brunson being treated at the center. "The incident concerning Mr. Brunson was a tragedy for the community and everyone who was involved. The VA cannot comment on any individual's health care – however, timely, quality access to services is the highest priority for the staff at the Wilmington VA Medical Center."

That was the last Patricia Buckworth saw of him until the evening of the shooting.

Patricia Buckworth had finished showering and was on Facebook, dozing off. Her son was lying on the couch in the living room watching TV.

It wasn't quite 6 p.m. when Rodrick Buckworth heard knocking at the door. When he asked who it was, there was no response.

When a second round of knocks came, still with no response, Rodrick decided not to answer.

"I wasn't going to open the door just for anybody," he said.

Rodrick, a slim 146-pound athlete, jumped up when the person on the other side kicked the door. By the second kick – the one that burst the door open – Rodrick had darted for the hallway leading to his mother's room.

A shot rang out, missing him.

The noise woke Patricia Buckworth, who quickly put on a pair of pants and a tank top before her son got into the room. She also grabbed her cellphone and began dialing 911.

Rodrick shut the door behind them. He moved his mother, who was asking what was going on, to the side and shoved her dresser in front of the door.

"I felt a little tug at the door," he said. "I felt pushing."

Then, he heard shots and smelled gunpowder. For a second, he thought it was fake – until he saw the bullet holes in the door.

"My mom said she was shot," he said. "I didn't know what to do, but I still had to be that brave person that I am and take care of my mom first."

He continued pushing the dresser against the door and another shot rang out. This one struck him in the neck, and he fell to the ground.

Brunson pushed the door open, entering the room, "Slow. Like it was his house. Like he was comfortable there," Rodrick said.

"When he got in the room, I thought life was over for me and my mom," Rodrick said. "I really didn't know what to expect. I just knew I was young and I wasn't ready to go."

In shock and unable to get up, Rodrick suddenly realized something had happened to his right arm because he couldn't move it.

Then Brunson spoke.

"How did you do this?" Rodrick remembered hearing him ask. "I'm thinking, 'Is he asking me how did I get in the room that fast, put the dresser in there?'

"I didn't know if he was talking to himself. I didn't know what the case was. ...Then he started talking to himself for a little bit."

A few feet away, his mother watched in horror.

She'd already dialed 911 and told operators that someone was trying to break into her home, but she'd dropped the cellphone when she felt the bullet's sting.

" 'Please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me,' " Patricia Buckworth remembered her son pleading. "I can see the shooter standing near Rodrick still."

"This is not happening," Brunson said after walking toward Patricia Buckworth, where he stood over her.

"I can still see the gun in his hand by his side," she said.

Then Brunson uttered his final words: "This is not happening. This is a dream."

"I heard one gunshot and he landed on top of me," she said, her eyes welling with tears.

Brunson's legs collapsed onto her body.

"I don't think I had enough time to be afraid," she said. "At that point I knew he was dead. At that point I just knew to get out of the room."

As the two ran out of the building, Rodrick knocked on neighbors' doors asking for help.

"Come on. Let's go, let's go," Patricia Buckworth told her son.

Outside, Rodrick begins shouting for help, telling people he'd been shot.

A UPS driver and several neighbors called 911.

Patricia Buckworth remembered her son telling her he was fatigued: "Mom, I'm just so tired."

"Please, please don't close your eyes," she told him. "I love you. I need you to stay awake. I need you to be here with me. I need you to stay awake."

As she insisted he not fall asleep, first responders arrived.

"Can you please take him first," she asked emergency workers.

Wounds healing

Both were taken to Christiana Hospital.

Patricia Buckworth was the first to be released. She watched over her son as much as she could. Despite his mother's watchful eyes, there were times Rodrick felt alone and thought about that night.

"I couldn't do nothing else but think about it," he said. "I was in the hospital, I had to think about why I was in the hospital. Nobody was there to stay with me. My mom was there, but she was in a different room. She could not come down."

So he thought about the incident, and wondered why it happened.

Both are out of the hospital and staying with family now.

When leaving the hospital, Rodrick said he was unable to sleep the first couple of nights.

"I would close my eyes and then I would wake up because I thought about it," he said. "I thought 'What if it were worse. What if I couldn't open my eyes no more. What if I wasn't here. What if my mom wasn't here. What if it was just me and not her.

"It's just thoughts that went through my head."

Neither will return to their apartment – a place Patricia Buckworth moved to try and shield her son from the influences of their old neighborhood on Wilmington's Eastside.

"He grew up in Wilmington, I grew up in Wilmington all my life, then things just started getting worse and worse," she said. So when the opportunity to move came up, she said they moved to Foxwood. The place was quiet, her son would have his own bedroom and bathroom, there also were woods and he could make new friends and meet new people.

"It's just giving him the opportunity to be able to be whatever it was he was going to be," she said.

Although their physical wounds are beginning to heal, they still have emotional scars to confront thanks to Brunson, who Patricia can only refer to as "the neighbor" or "the shooter."

"It's difficult for me to even see his name. To read his name," she said.

There are sounds that remind her of that night.

Her sister dropped a fork the other day, reminding Patricia Buckworth of the sound the vase filled with marbles made when the dresser was moved.

"I've never been one afraid of thunderstorms," she said. "But it thundered the other night and I just woke up and I said, 'OK. Is this going to be forever embedded in my mind?'"

She asked her son to touch her, "just so I knew that someone was there," she said.

He did.

Patricia said she worries when she, and her son, go to one of his track meets.

"Is he going to freeze up when he hears that gun go off?" she asked, admitting she's not sure how she will react.

But Rodrick is confident he will return to school in the fall, as well as continue to perform at events. This will include at the Delaware Teen Idol contest this August.

"School is definitely still my option," he said. "I have to go back to school to better myself. I can't let this stop me from what I've go to do. I have to finish what I started."

Patricia Buckworth said she's noticed slight differences in her son, especially how he's more reserved. But he's starting to open up more.

"There were pieces that he had, that I didn't have," he said. "There were pieces that I had, that he didn't have. So part of the reason early on he wasn't talking about it is because he hadn't remembered all of it or he wasn't allowing himself to go through with it."

Despite it all, Patricia said everything happens for a reason.

"For me, right now, embrace the relationships that you have," she said. "The friends that you have, the people that are in your circle, do not take for granted that someone will always be there."

Staff reporters Terri Sanginiti and William H. McMichael contributed to this story.

Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.