Paralysed teen plans to dismantle gun company

SOMETIMES Brandon Maxfield forgets. He will be cruising down the street with his best friend, talking about pro wrestling, music and girls, when it dawns on him with a familiar flash of embarrassment that it’s not his rainbow-spiked hair strangers are staring at.

“Then I’ll be like, oh yeah, I’m in a wheelchair,” said the Willits, California, teenager, who was paralysed from the neck down after being shot by a babysitter a decade ago and gets around by manipulating mechanical sensors around his head.

Maxfield, 17, is in the final days of a tense, quixotic gambit to buy and dismantle the company that made the gun that left him a quadriplegic.

Last year the teen won a record $24 million judgment against Bryco Arms, its distribution arm and its owner. Bryco was forced into bankruptcy, and tomorrow, a federal judge in Florida will auction off 75,600 unassembled guns and other remaining assets.

Maxfield hopes to buy the inventory, melt it down and create a sculpture from the metal. It is tempting to see divine retribution in such a scheme, but the teen and his lawyer, Richard Ruggieri, insist revenge is not their motivation - they simply want to make sure no one else is hurt.

“It started with horror, the realisation that - notwithstanding the fact that we had this unanimous finding of defect - there was nothing in the law to prevent them from putting these defective guns back on the market,” said Ruggieri, who took on Maxfield’s case in 2001 when no other lawyer would.

Ned Nashban, the lawyer representing Bryco owner Bruce Jennings in the bankruptcy, described Maxfield’s acquisition attempt as a publicity stunt that has only delayed the gun maker’s efforts to settle his debts.

“From our standpoint, it’s not a moral question of keeping guns off the street or not,” Nashban said. “Bankruptcy court is not the place to socially legislate. It’s to create the most money to pay creditors.”

Maxfield’s life-changing injury happened when he was seven and a 20-year-old family friend who was baby-sitting thought he heard a suspicious noise and grabbed a gun from a dresser drawer. The baby sitter called Brandon’s mother, who instructed him to immediately unload the .38-caliber pistol. While trying to do so, the baby sitter accidentally pulled the trigger. The bullet struck Brandon in the chin and went out through his neck, shattering his spine.

Since the accident, Mayfield has spent more than 500 days in the hospital and been treated for pneumonia 28 times. His spine is degenerating, and doctors say a metal rod must eventually be inserted into his neck to support it. That will limit the mobility of his head, the only body part he can fully control.