Amedy Dewey sat in a hospital bed, the blue gown and fluorescent lights as familiar as the IV taped to her arm. Eight years after a shotgun blast tore through her face, she was waiting to be cut open again. Nearly 40 surgeries had come before this one, each a battle against the damage inflicted on a frigid January night in 2018.
She was 18, a high school senior, when her stepfather, David Somers, shot her in the face, killed her mother, Lisa Somers, and then turned the gun on himself. The shotgun pellets destroyed her left eye socket, shattered the roof of her mouth, and ravaged her optic nerve, eyesight, nose, and upper lip. As police picked pieces of her teeth and face off the highway, they whispered to each other that she wouldn’t make it.
But she did. And now, at 26, Dewey was facing what felt like her last chance to feel whole again.
This surgery was different. A team of surgeons at Northwell Health’s Lenox Hill Hospital donated their time to rebuild her jaw, restore her teeth, and give her a new left eye. The costs were supported by NextGenFace, a nonprofit for craniofacial patients. For Dewey, the weight of years of pain and anxiety was crushing. “When is it gonna be done?” she asked. “The anxiety, the fear that I’m gonna be in pain for this long.”
Firearms remain the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States, with nearly 22,000 adolescents shot and killed or wounded each year. For survivors, recovery is a marathon of surgeries, chronic pain, and costly treatment. The trauma doesn’t end in the operating room. David Hirsch, the lead surgeon, knows this well. “A patient doesn’t know when that’s going to strike,” he said, describing how hospital sights and sounds can trigger floods of emotion.
Dewey’s journey has been defined by resilience. Just three months after the shooting, she wore a beaded, dark blue prom dress and told the makeup artist, “Don’t cover me up. These are battle scars, not shameful. I wear them proudly.” But strangers were cruel. A girl covered her eye and pointed. A man called her “pig nose.” Another said she was “offending makeup.” The pity stung more. She avoided mirrors for years. “Just because I got shot doesn’t mean treat me fragile,” she said.
The physical toll was relentless. Her weight fluctuated, her dentures stopped fitting, and for a time, she had no teeth. She survived on mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and finely diced chicken. Eating a burger became a herculean ordeal.
The surgery at Lenox Hill was a massive undertaking. Surgeons used bone from her lower leg to rebuild her upper jaw, implanted prosthetic teeth, and placed specialized implants in her eye socket for a future prosthesis. After three months of healing, she received a custom orbital prosthesis on June 4. “We rebuilt the entire upper jaw,” Hirsch said, “to support the cheekbones, the eye, the mouth, and the teeth.”
Now, people don’t do double takes when they see Dewey. A local store owner noticed her upbeat disposition. A friend said, “You are coming back.” She’s still on a healing journey, battling internally and mentally, but each year brings improvement. She advocates for gun violence awareness and mental health. “I scream for mental health,” she said, “because nobody talks about it.”
This summer, she’s volunteering at a retreat for kids with craniofacial differences. “I look in the mirror, and I just smile,” Dewey said. “I’m so happy. It’s finally coming together.”
