Former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee has opened up in harrowing detail about the night he was shot three times in Las Vegas, revealing the full story of the confrontation and the “lucky” circumstances that saved him from a far worse fate.
Speaking on the “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, the 68-year-old musician recounted the 2024 incident, which began while he was walking his 85-pound pitbull at nearly 3:00 a.m. Lee told host Chris Jericho he spotted two “scrawny” kids in hoodies checking out a neighbor’s motorcycle. When they saw him, they fled, but in the same direction Lee was walking.
“I think they think I’m following them, when I’m really just going home,” Lee recalled. The situation escalated when the two kids turned and confronted him.
“Finally they turn around and they got flashlights in my eyes. And they said, ‘You need to turn around and get the f**k outta here,'” Lee said. He refused, replying: “You need to turn around… This is my neighborhood. You don’t belong here.”
Lee tried to de-escalate the situation, but as he turned to walk away, one of the individuals sealed the confrontation. “He said, ‘That’s it. Keep walking, bi**h.’ And that pissed me off… I turned around [and I was], like, ‘Punk.’ Then I heard gunfire.”
Lee said he never saw a weapon. “I saw flashes… I could hear the bullets whistling by.” His first thought was for his dog. “I thought, ‘They’re trying to shoot my dog.’ So I throw the leash at him and say, ‘Go home.'”
Once his dog was safe, Lee realized he was the target. “That’s when I noticed a burning in my forearm… And then next thing I felt was like something hit me in the back… So I figure, ‘Okay, it’s time to run.'” As he tried to flee, he was hit again. “Then I got hit in the foot… then I fell to the ground.”
It was only then that the bizarre nature of his survival became clear. “Getting shot was unlucky, but everything about it ended up being lucky,” Lee explained.
He detailed his injuries: “The one in the forearm was through and through, but it didn’t hit any veins. It didn’t hit the bone.” The shot to his back was perilously close to his spinal cord. “It was so close to the spine… [It] broke a couple of ribs, punctured my lung, but that’s all healable. So that was lucky.”
The foot injury, however, was the most incredible. “The doctor said it would’ve gone all the way through and probably blown a couple toes off, but I have a titanium heel,” Lee revealed, from a shattering injury 18 years prior. “So the bullet hit the titanium, ricocheted up and so I have all my toes. All of that’s lucky.”
His luck didn’t end there. “That night I had my phone in my shirt pocket, which I never do… I was able to call 911.”
Lee also confirmed that police caught the shooters two weeks later, aided by the national news coverage of the assault. The gun, he was told, was “tied to two previous murders… I have no doubt he was trying to kill me. Thankfully he didn’t spend too much time at the range.”
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