Irving Plaza Shooting Survivor Recounts the Harrowing Incident and Its Aftermath

By Rich Juzwiak | October 26, 2016 | 4:00pm

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On May 26, a shooting at a T.I. concert at New York’s Irving Plaza left one dead (bodyguard Ronald McPhatter) and three others injured. One of the victims, 26-year-old Jersey City resident Maggie Carrie Heckstall, told her story about the shooting and the resulting trauma she lives with on last night’s True Life: I’ve Been Shot. Along with DJ Jamarrius Kelly, the episode’s other subject, Heckstall shared the hardship and emotional complexity that arises after surviving a brush with death.

“I’m mad that this happened to me,” said Heckstall, a singer, to her producer. “I’m mad at the person. I’m mad at the place I went to that this was able to happen… I’m mad at the police. I feel like I’m more mad at the police than the person, ‘cause I don’t know who the person is.” Rapper Troy Ave was charged with attempted second-degree murder and four counts of criminal possession of a weapon, and pleaded not guilty in June.

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The charges only apply to what happened in the balcony of Irving Plaza on May 26. What happened in the green room—where the fight that led to gunfire broke out and where Heckstall was shot—remains unclear. Per the New York Times’s report on Troy Ave’s hearing:

Soon after the shooting, Mr. Collins [Troy Ave’s birth name] arrived at NYU Langone Medical Center in a minivan. In the vehicle, officers recovered three firearms, including a Kel-Tec PF-9 semiautomatic pistol that ballistics tests confirmed was the sole gun used in the shooting, the police said. Mr. Collins was arrested the next day.

Robert K. Boyce, the chief of detectives for the New York Police Department, said there was no evidence that any other weapon had been used, but investigators had not ruled out the possibility that someone other than Mr. Collins had also fired the pistol.

Heckstall, who specifically stated that she was unaware of the identity of her shooter, is suing Irving Plaza. In an interview with All Hip Hop that ran yesterday, she said:

I haven’t spoken with the NYPD since I was in the hospital. I never had to go into the precinct. But when I tell you the precinct came to me… they had my floor blocked off. They were just the worst. The last call I had with an officer, he hung up on me and told me that he has been up for two days when I was trying to get my family to the hospital. Then a lady came in and asked if I left the bullet in me on purpose. They treated me so bad that I don’t even want to hear anything they have to say. They can deliver whatever they have to say through my lawyers. I don’t have to speak to them at all.

You can watch the full True Life: I’ve Been Shot episode here.