CV grad in hospital after being shot

A 19-year-old who recently graduated from Central Valley High School is in critical condition at a Boise hospital after being shot in the face Monday in what appears to be an unprovoked attack.

Austin Askins, who graduated from the Spokane Valley school in June, moved to Southern Idaho to attend the Northwest Lineman College in Meridian. School started last week.

“We’re all in shock,” said Kay McGlocklin, a family friend whose son, Brian, graduated from CV with Askins. “Your children are not supposed to go school and get shot.”

Askins’ family lives in Liberty Lake.

According to Boise police, Askins and two other students from the college were shot while attending a small gathering at a home early Monday.

The shooter, unknown to the victims, was walking down the street when he approached the group about 2 a.m. and began making small talk, police said. The man left and returned a short time later, police said, this time wearing a blue bandana on his face and carrying a small-caliber handgun.

Detectives said he fired at least four shots at close range, hitting Askins and two other students: a 19-year-old from Fallon, Nev., and a 20-year-old from Phoenix.

Police are still looking for the shooter, who they believe robbed the victims before running.

“It’s a horrific, horrific act,” said Austin Askins’ mother, Wendy.

“As we sent our boys off to school last week, we never could have imagined such a horrific scenario,” father Scott Askins wrote in a statement given to police. “These are good boys, whose only mistake was to trust and befriend a stranger.”

Austin Askins was shot once in the mouth, but the bullet fragmented before lodging in his spine, police said.

Wendy Askins believes her son is alive because of titanium dental work he received this summer. He apparently lost some teeth playing hockey as a child. When the bullet bounced off the titanium, the projectile fragmented before being sent through Askins’ tongue and lodging in his neck.

“I was told that the bullet is, like, a toenail’s length away from his spinal cord,” said Brian McGlocklin, 18, who traveled to Boise this week to be near his hospitalized friend.

Askins still needs a ventilator, his mother said, but she expects her son to make a full recovery with some complications.

“He’s a fighter, so he’s fighting,” Wendy Askins said.

McGlocklin said he and Askins – who is known for his sense of humor – played football together at Central Valley, and the two had become very good friends over the past year. Together with a group of four or five other classmates, the boys called themselves the “Lone Rangers,” sitting together every day at the same lunch table.

“It was just something fun that we made up, like a high school frat,” McGlocklin said. The boys, including Askins, would dress in matching T-shirts or in shirts and ties, “just for fun.” The boys were determined to stay in touch as they went their separate ways.

“He’s a social butterfly” Wendy Askins said. “He wants to see all his friends; he wants to hear from them. That helps him get through this.”

According to a statement provided by his family, Kyle Detomasi, 19, of Nevada, was shot in the back of the neck. The bullet impacted his spinal cord, and he has not gained “any use of his extremities.”

The other victim, an unidentified 20-year-old from Arizona, was hit in the shoulder and has been released from the hospital, Boise police said.