Shooting victim doesn't think he will ever recover from injuries
Charlie Lacosta's St. John's home turned into a war zone on Remembrance Day, 2013.
Lacosta, 34, a former construction worker, had bullets rip through his leg and stomach.
The man pulling the trigger was Jason Marsh, 39, who was sentenced on Friday to 12 years in prison for shooting Lacosta and another man two months earlier.
Marsh had gone to Lacosta's home with a laser-sighted .22-calibre gun with a 30-round magazine and began firing into the house.
"I took off and he kept shooting, shooting, shooting rounds at me. And I took my dog and went to the back door and I went up to the back of the house, with my dog," said Lacosta.
"I went up to the back of the shed and lay down until I seen a car pass. I brought myself way back down here and I was bleeding and I picked up the cell phone which I left on the couch and phoned the police."
Says he was target of a hit
Marsh pleaded guilty to the shooting. The court heard that Marsh was acting out of vengeance, but Lacosta says he was the target of a hit.
He said Marsh was hired by a man whose former girlfriend Lacosta had made pregnant.
Lacosta said he thinks Marsh, who admitted at trial that during the shooting he was a "scary ... out of control" guy, was trying to kill him.
Marsh was originally charged with attempted murder, but that charge was dropped.
"It kind of made me disgusted, because of the system," Lacosta told CBC News on Monday.
"I got to deal with this every day, every day of my life now. Every day that goes by, I'm going to have to deal with this. I'll never be the same."
The bullets ripped his right thigh apart. The ones that entered his stomach sliced his liver and tore into his bowel.
"I had a [colostomy] bag on my side. I had many feet of [bowel] removed," Lacosta said. "I had a bag on for almost a year, or something like that."
Lacosta said he doesn't remember how many operations he's had.
He was told he might never walk again. He beat those odds, but he can't stride about with the ease he once did. It's now more of a slow gait.
Emotionally, Lacosta said he is less trustful of people, is fearful, and doesn't sleep well.
He also said he didn't want to testify and didn't give a victim impact statement.
"I'm just now coming around. I didn't want to be down at the courtrooms," he said. "I just tried to forget about it."
Lascosta said he was in counselling, and it was working.
"The system said we don't have enough funding for that, so they stopped it," he said. "Just left me where I am today. Just fighting it on my own."
In court, Marsh apologized for shooting Lacosta.
"The apology is not really much — to say you're sorry — because you wouldn't do that to a dog"
When asked what he would like to say to Marsh, Lacosta replied, "There's not very much you would want to say to a person that tried to kill you over nothing."
Before his injuries, Lacosta had a Newfoundland dog he was very fond of, but had to give it up, because he couldn't look after it.
He now has a pit bull named Chevy for protection.
"I don't think I'll ever totally recover," Lacosta said, adding that he feels, "Angry, sad, depressed, everything."
