Shot in the head during alleged hate attack, California man details ‘miracle’ recovery
A Northern California man who has been hailed as a hero for defending his friend and other bystanders during a suspected hate crime assault last year in Shasta County spoke Monday — the eve of the alleged attacker’s criminal trial — on his “miracle” recovery after being pistol-whipped and shot multiple times, including once in the top of his head.
The shooting happened April 18, 2021, at a boat launch in the town of Lakehead, where the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office said a man approached two victims and instigated an unprovoked attack.
The suspect, identified by law enforcement as 21-year-old Silas Hesselberg of Sacramento, walked up to the two men, called one of them a racial slur, pulled a handgun from his pocket and shot both of them, the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement at the time.
Both victims were taken to a hospital, where one of them, 35-year-old Travis Barber, was treated for serious injuries. His friend, a 41-year-old Black man who was the target of the slur, was released from the hospital within a few days. He has not been publicly identified.
Daisha Barber said she remembers driving to the hospital that day, thinking her then-boyfriend was unlikely to survive.
“Even as the week progressed, they said, ‘Oh, well, he’s probably not going to be able to walk,” she said Monday in a Zoom interview with reporters. “He’s probably not going to be able to talk. He’s probably going to be a vegetable. ... Are you prepared for this?’”
Travis Barber spent 12 days in the intensive care unit at Mercy Medical Center Redding, the first nine in a medically induced coma.
“During the altercation, I was shot four times,” he said in Monday’s interview, hosted and facilitated by Sutter Health and focusing on Barber’s recovery and rehabilitation process.
Barber briefly addressed the attack itself.
“Once in the shin, once in the groin, once in my hand and once in the head, right around here,” he said of the gunshot wounds, pointing to the right-front quadrant of the crown of his head.
Authorities said Hesselberg called Barber’s friend the racial slur before shooting him in the back.
A struggle followed between Hesselberg and Barber, the latter of whom fell down an embankment, scarring his eye, before the former allegedly pistol-whipped and shot him in the head.
All of this happened in front of Daisha, Daisha’s then-13-year-old daughter and others gathered at the boat launch, including children, Barber said Monday.
After the gunfire, two people in the area found Hesselberg and held him at gunpoint until law enforcement arrived and arrested him, sheriff’s officials said at the time.
Prosecutors charged Hesselberg with two counts of attempted murder, including special allegations for committing a hate crime; additional weapons charges including possession of a silencer; and misdemeanors including child endangerment.
His jury trial in Shasta Superior Court began Tuesday.
‘That’s where I was pistol-whipped’
Barber was rushed to Mercy Medical Center in Redding, where he was treated for 15 days in total, including the 12 in the ICU.
There, doctors “removed half of his skull,” Daisha Barber said. It was reattached months later, in August 2021.
In the interim, Barber had to wear a specially designed helmet for his self-described “extra large” head.
Discharged last spring from Mercy in Redding, Barber’s options included a few different acute rehab centers. He ultimately chose Sutter Rehabilitation Institute, which is attached to Sutter Roseville Medical Center.
Doctors initially said he would likely need another four to six weeks there. Instead, Daisha said, he was discharged after another 15 days.
“Travis was kind of a miracle person from the very beginning,” said Dr. Adora Matthews, the medical director of the 55-bed Sutter Rehabilitation Institute. “I had read the story in the newspaper, and then he ended up being my patient.”
Matthews and company treated Barber in the institute’s designated brain injury unit, a 10-bed wing that is partially isolated from other parts of the rehab center to avoid overstimulating patients.
Matthews said COVID-19 protocols in the thick of the pandemic made for a challenge, but that Daisha and other family members were allowed to visit.
Family support, the doctor said, is “absolutely critical ... to help him get his memories back.”
Cookie, the couple’s 4-year-old gray pit bull, also came to see Barber at the rehab center.
The Barbers huddled together on the couch of their Shasta Lake home for Monday’s interview, Travis wearing a blue collared shirt patterned with shaggy dogs and collecting some kisses from Cookie shortly before the interview began.
Travis said he isn’t 100% recovered and knows he likely never will be. He sometimes stumbles with his speech, though he spoke with no blemishes on Monday’s Zoom call. He’ll often become very fatigued, he says.
“He’s still the same guy,” Daisha said.
He has also lost significant grip strength in his right hand, where a bullet entered the top just above his wrist and exited near his lower palm. Barber, a righty, said he’ll drop things on occasion. Chopsticks are a no-go.
After the reattachment of the left half of his skull last August, performed by the same doctor who handled his initial emergency care, Barber’s injuries are concealed now by dark black hair he keeps in a short-backed mullet.
“The bald spot on the back of my head, that’s where I was pistol-whipped,” he said as Daisha pulled back his hair to reveal a three-inch scar.
The gunshot striking Barber from nearly point-blank range “pierced about two inches of his skull and went through his brain,” Daisha explained.
“Thankfully, it still works.”
‘I know what’s right and what’s wrong’
The pair chuckled as they recalled the first thing Travis wanted to do after being discharged from the hospital: gamble.
“He said, ‘I just wanna go play some cards, hon,’” said Daisha, who drove her husband to Hard Rock Casino in Wheatland, where he played three-card poker for an hour.
He won a few hundred dollars, all while wearing his recovery helmet and with a hospital bracelet still on his wrist.
Matthews called Barber an “outlier,” estimating his recovery in the 95th to 99th percentile of patients treated for traumatic brain injury. Many who end up at the Sutter Rehabilitation Institute with brain injuries are victims of car accidents, she said.
Matthews said Barber’s relative youth may have been a helpful factor in his speedy recovery.
Travis Barber rejects the “hero” title others have given him. (Said Daisha: “This man saved my life.”)
“I consider myself a person who would do the right thing. To sit there and label myself a hero is kind of hard, kind of confusing, kind of awkward. But I know what’s right and what’s wrong.”
Travis and Daisha got married last October, on their fifth anniversary of dating, in a private ceremony in South Lake Tahoe.
Of their nuptials, Daisha quipped: “It only took a gunshot wound to the head.”
This story was originally published September 19, 2022 at 2:24 PM.
