Bullet-Proof Seat Belt Saves Plumber

Seat belts save lives, they say, but normally not in the way to which Eric Gearring owes his.

The 29-year-old plumber was sitting in his Rescue Rooter van in the Mid-City area Wednesday night, waiting to unplug a drain, when two men approached and asked him what time it was.

As Gearring looked at his watch, police said, one of the men drew a handgun and fired a single shot. The bullet hit the passenger window, shattered the glass and continued toward Gearring’s head.

But his trusty shoulder harness, a strap of tightly woven nylon, stood between the slug and its target.

Like a veteran catcher fielding a fiery fastball, the belt caught the bullet in its webbing and stopped it with a thud. Gearring, unscathed, ran to a nearby house and called police.

“Pretty wild, huh?” Mel Bergman, general manager of Rescue Rooter, said Thursday as he surveyed the silvery indentation, about the size of a fingerprint, left in the strap. “He’s got to be the luckiest guy in the world.”

Police, who have made no arrests, said the glass obviously slowed the bullet. But they added that the slug, which was found on the van’s floor, probably would have struck Gearring in the head and could have proved lethal.

“Definitely a case for wearing your seat belt,” Detective Thomas Barnhart said.

Gearring, who lives near the Rescue Rooter headquarters in Lennox, was not at work Thursday and could not be reached at home.

His mother, who asked that her name not be used, credited his escape to divine forces. “People call it luck,” she said. “But he was blessed. That’s the only thing that saved him.”

Gearring told police that he believed he might have been targeted because the color of his Rescue Rooter cap and uniform are associated with a local street gang.

“It may have been a case of wearing the wrong color,” Barnhart said. “He believed the suspects were gang members and that they might have mistaken him.”

The shooting occurred about 7:30 p.m. in the 5000 block of Bangor Street, near La Brea Avenue and the Santa Monica Freeway. It is a tiny, dead-end street, but the sign that indicates this has been obliterated by graffiti.

Neighbors said they were huddled around their television sets watching news of the war in the Persian Gulf when they heard the shot.

“It’s like more stuff happens over here than over there,” said Lumon Duvenary.