The note showed up last month on the front desk of the North Side police station. Nestled among stacks of reports and message logs, the appeal for help was easy to overlook.
Still, its author, Detective Joseph Bielevicz, hoped for the best in his effort to raise money for Tionna Highsmith, 15, a girl in a wheelchair with a bullet in her back.
Detective Bielevicz, who spends his days arresting drug dealers and gun runners, had gotten to know Tionna while investigating the shooting that had partially paralyzed her. The note asked his colleagues in the Police Bureau and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to help raise money for a wheelchair ramp.
The night of Aug. 3, Tionna set off before dark with two girlfriends for the annual St. Cyril of Alexandria Church carnival in her Brighton Heights neighborhood. She was 14 years old.
Tionna's grandmother, Jeanette Thompson, had raised her since she was small. Tionna was not streetwise, Mrs. Thompson said, but she knew how to keep her business private and be independent.
One life lesson she had not learned, though, as Detective Bielevicz would later say, was how to control her curiosity. As the festival was breaking up, Tionna, sitting on a car in the 3800 block of Brighton Road, noticed two girls fighting in the street. She wandered over to look.
Tionna saw a friend's little brother standing in traffic. She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him to safety.
"Then, when I was walking away," Tionna said, "I was on the ground."
Someone dangling out the window of a car driving by had fired a 9mm handgun numerous times in Tionna's direction.
Tionna said she did not remember seeing or hearing anyone firing a gun at her. Her memory picks up with a young man she knew from the area cradling her in his arms. Before he flagged down a car and took her to Allegheny General Hospital, Tionna said, she remembers seeing another young man firing a gun.
"I heard more gunshots, and I saw the boy shooting back at whoever shot me," Tionna said.
In September, police arrested him, a 19-year-old North Side man, on firearms charges. They believe he was the intended target in a dispute between rival neighborhood gangs.
Two months later, prosecutors withdrew charges. For one thing, authorities said, Tionna was too frail to subject to a trial. For another, police did not have a victim because they had not arrested anyone for shooting Tionna.
'My baby'
Jeanette Thompson, 61, a home health aide, calls her granddaughter "my baby." On the night Tionna was shot, Mrs. Thompson was a few blocks away in their home on Verner Court, off California Avenue.
"Around 10 or so, I was in bed, just watching TV, and the phone rang, and this idiot of a woman was on the other end telling me my granddaughter was shot. Hello! I got lots of granddaughters," Mrs. Thompson said.
The woman -- Mrs. Thompson believes it was a nurse -- could not pronounce Tionna's name correctly.
"I just threw down the phone and ran," Mrs. Thompson said. She was in her sleepwear. She and her husband drove to the hospital, handed their car keys to the security guard and dashed inside.
"I was thinking about, 'What in the world? How could this happen?' She was at church. I thought maybe somebody was shooting in the church," Mrs. Thompson said.
It was hours before she could see Tionna.
"Then the doctor came out with his sad news that, No. 1, she's a paraplegic, and No. 2, she's lost a kidney, and No. 3, the bullet's still in her back. And then, about an hour after that, we could go see her.
"She had tubes everywhere," Mrs. Thompson said. "I just told her I loved her and kissed her. She had all these tubes, but she was a little-bitty girl with all these big machines. She just laid there. But she was alive, and I just kept saying that to myself, 'She's alive. She's alive. She's alive.' "
Tionna's recovery was rapid.
"In just a few days, she was laughing and telling people to get out of her room and not to bother her teddy bears," Mrs. Thompson said, laughing.
After two weeks in the hospital, Tionna went into rehabilitation. When she returned home, her wheelchair couldn't fit through the front door. She learned to do a wheelie to conquer the single step in the rear. In March, the family moved to a bigger home in a Pittsburgh suburb -- police asked that its location not be revealed -- and Tionna had more room to maneuver.
By then, Mrs. Thompson said, the family was tapped out. They could not afford a wheelchair ramp, so Mrs. Thompson and her husband, who has a pacemaker, must exert themselves.
"With her wheelchair, one of us has to bend over and pull her up the four steps, and it's not easy," Mrs. Thompson said. "With the ramp, she'll be able to come up by herself."
Inherited the case
Tionna's case did not initially belong to Detective Bielevicz, who is assigned to ATF. At first, it was handled by his former partner, Detective John Hamilton, and Detective Yvonne Overholt at the North Side station.
"It was frustrating," Detective Hamilton said. He worked the case for several months, even coming up with a possible partial name of Tionna's shooter. But after a time, he and his partner had exhausted their leads and had received little cooperation from the public. Detective Hamilton moved to the crime unit, and Detective Overholt had other cases to pursue.
"It's sad to say, but you stretch it as far as you can," Detective Hamilton said. "Sometimes, you've just got to eat it. You feel for the victim, and you want to make an arrest on it, but you can't."
Then, he said, you move on. With limited time and a constant stream of new cases, old ones get overtaken. Until, that is, new information comes along.
"That's where Joe came in," Detective Hamilton said.
In the spring, Detective Bielevicz took over the case when information came his way that he believes identified Tionna's shooter. The name matched the partial one that Detective Hamilton had developed.
Knowing is not enough, though. Now Detective Bielevicz needs people with firsthand knowledge to speak with police. But no one is willing to testify.
"I have no doubt who did this, but we need the right people to come forward," Detective Bielevicz said. "We can't do it by ourselves. This isn't 'CSI.' We're not going to pull up hairs off the street and match it to DNA. It doesn't work like that."
Some parents would not let police interview children police believe witnessed the shooting. And in one instance, Detective Bielevicz said, he was told by a mother of a juvenile who saw what happened that "everybody should just be glad that this little girl survived."
None of that sat well with Detective Bielevicz, 35, an opinionated, 13-year police veteran.
"I don't think people are living in constant fear of retaliation. It's pure selfishness, if you ask me," Detective Bielevicz said. "It's amazing how many people were probably there and witnessed this."
Detective Bielevicz had another reason to be perturbed. In addition to being a cop, he lives in Brighton Heights.
"It bothered me that that happened in my neighborhood," he said. "I happen to live here and do give a damn."
Planning the ramp
When Detective Bielevicz was leaving Tionna's house after interviewing her, Mrs. Thompson casually mentioned the need for a wheelchair ramp.
Detective Bielevicz contacted the Center for Victims of Violent Crime, which referred him to Cornell Abraxas WorkBridge, an Allegheny County program through which juvenile offenders do court-ordered community service. A group of young men from the program could install the ramp, which was estimated to cost $1,104.
"I thought we could probably do that," Detective Bielevicz said. And so the fund-raising campaign was born.
"I am asking all of you to ensure that I am not proven wrong by contributing to this effort if you can," Detective Bielevicz wrote in the note to his colleagues. "I think this is a great opportunity for us to help a truly innocent victim in a meaningful way."
Later, he mused aloud: "Why this girl? It just struck me as something that would be good to do. I wish we could do it for everybody, but we can't, and you won't find somebody more deserving than this girl."
Still making plans
Tionna is, in many ways, a typical teenager. She is a bit of a dreamer, has her own cell phone and hates getting up in the morning.
In the fall, she enters ninth grade. She wants to volunteer at a rehabilitation center. She hopes to travel. When she grows up, Tionna wants to become a lawyer or a judge or a juvenile probation officer.
Bullet or no bullet in her back -- she keeps two X-rays of her spine in her bedroom -- Tionna has plans. Whether she will execute them on foot or in a wheelchair is an open question.
Sometimes, Tionna feels tingling in her legs, but there is no movement. Sometimes, she dreams of walking.
Tionna's earliest memory is of riding a bike when she was 5 or 6 years old. She said the doctors told her that, if she were to regain any movement, it probably would happen between six and 12 months after the shooting. The deadline is approaching.
"It's almost been a year, so I guess not," she said.
Tionna sometimes gets depressed. But mostly, her attitude is matter-of-fact.
"It could be a lot worse. It could be a lot better," Tionna said. "Sitting around moping is not going to help."
The only time she tears up during an interview is when she talks about the independence a wheelchair ramp would bring her.
"I could go outside when I feel like it. I really don't like depending on people," she said.
Work begins
Work began earlier this month on the ramp. It was near completion on Friday. Detective Bielevicz raised $1,274 from between 40 and 50 people. In addition to funding the ramp, he was able to give Tionna some cash and a bookstore gift certificate.
"She's so full of life, and she's taking it so well," Detective Bielevicz said. "I don't know that I could deal with something the way this girl is dealing with it. I have all the respect in the world for her."
Mrs. Thompson is not convinced that Tionna's shooter will be caught. But she and her granddaughter are grateful to Detective Bielevicz. Mrs. Thompson remembered the genesis of the ramp project: no promises, just possibilities.
"He just said he was going to see what he could do. Then he called me and told me he thought he had some people to do it. Then, the next thing, he called and said, 'You're not going to move, are you?' " Mrs. Thompson said. "He is great. He is wonderful. I just love him."
Lake Fong, Post-Gazette
Tionna Highsmith, 15, looks through a screen door from her grandmother's house.
Click photo for larger image.
First Published: July 16, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
