Shooting Victim Lost A Friend And An Eye

At first glance, Ernest Chris Roybal's left eye looks as if it's swollen shut.

It's not.

"It's gone," says Roybal, the survivor of a shooting last month in West Seattle - a shooting that took the life of his friend, Sheryl Jean Hernandez, 27.

Roybal, 28, survived, but he spent 10 days in Harborview Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the head.

He has finally brought himself to make an appointment to have a glass eye fitted as he begins dealing with what happened.

That Sunday night, Aug. 16, Roybal and Hernandez had gone to a park on Beach Drive Southwest to relax and talk.

Hernandez was a good friend and his brother's former girlfriend, said Roybal. The two often got together to talk.

They had been at the park for a half-hour or so, Roybal said, when a man approached and asked for the time. "I said it was about 11:30," recalled Roybal. "He pulled out this gun."

Shots were fired.

"The next thing I remember is my other eye coming into focus," he said. Hernandez was lying next to him.

"I called out to her, and she didn't answer."

Roybal made it back to his pickup and drove to the Alki Beach area, looking for help. Police and medics were called. Witnesses had found Hernandez and tried to revive her but could not.

Roybal says he can recall much of what his attacker looked like - a black male, under 25, weighing less than 190 pounds, wearing a black bomber jacket with the name of an athletic team on it, and yellow baggy pants.

"I'm pretty sure that dude was in a gang, he was so expert, the way he pulled that gun out," he said. Roybal thinks the shooting may have been done as some kind of initiation, where a would-be gang member is ordered to shoot someone.

No arrests have been made in the attack, and police have asked the public for help.

As Roybal continues to recover, he says he's trying to adjust to the vision loss. "I haven't had nightmares, but I dream a lot, and it's like I dream with two eyes."