'I'm not angry': How 16-year-old Makai Simpson survived the Dadeville mass shooting

Sixteen-year-old Makai Simpson doesn’t know how many bullets hit him while he was at his friend Alexis Dowdell’s birthday party in April. Doctors have removed two, and he’s still carrying around four. But he counts more gunshot wounds on his body.

The Opelika High School football star was one of more than 30 people injured when gunfire erupted inside of a sweet 16 celebration in downtown Dadeville on April 15, ultimately killing four people.

“It was so quick,” Simpson said, lying on a homecare bed in his family's living room. 

He’s undergone multiple surgeries and was doing well enough to be discharged from the hospital. Still, the wounds in his leg, hand and back are not fully healed. Doctors gave him a three- to five-month estimate for his recovery time.

He said he’s grateful to still be alive, but the way some people talk about what happened that Saturday night bothers him. Just the other day, he heard a group of people talking about what the victims of the shooting “should have done.”

“They try to make it seem like it’s something that you could plan. You can’t plan on what you’re going to do because you’re not expecting it,” he said. “If you drop, you get shot. It’s going to bounce off and ricochet. If you run, you get shot in the back.” 

Reacting to survive

Simpson tried both of those options. He made it out of the dance studio where the party was held, but not before bullets from at least two of the shooters’ seven guns struck him. 

“I passed out, and once I ended up lifting my head back up, that’s when I saw everybody trying to crawl out. It looked like something out of a movie,” Simpson said. “People started crawling on top of me, and I was feeling myself get shot in my leg. It got to a point when I almost gave up.”

He stopped moving, curled up on the ground and let others escape over him. Then a bullet bounced off the floor and struck his left hand. 

“That’s the moment it clicked for me: ‘I’ve got to go,’” Simpson said. “With the strength I did have, I left and crawled out, tried to hide.”

He thought about his football career, his teammates, his coaches, his hopes to play in college, and he pushed himself outside. 

I play football. I play football. I’m playing football. 

Those are the words Simpson said ran through his head on a loop once he started moving. He wasn’t going to let someone else’s terrible actions put a stop to his dreams if he could help it.

Getting out of the building didn’t mean reaching safety, though. Simpson said he didn’t recognize any of the gunmen, and he didn’t know if they were trying to kill everyone at the party or if there were more of them on the street.

Simpson kept crawling until he ran out of energy trying to pull himself up onto a ledge two buildings down. He said police and ambulances had arrived at that point, but none of them moved to help him. 

“I was in plain sight,” Simpson said. “I wasn’t in sight of the ambulance, but everybody had seen me. When you’re there by the door, you’ve got to see me.”

A bystander named Jamichael was the one who picked up Simpson and drove him to nearby Lake Martin Community Hospital. 

Mourning his friends

Simpson woke up in his hospital bed asking for friend Marsiah Collins. 

The pair had walked into the party together and noticed a “hostile” energy. Simpson later found out that a speaker had fallen over earlier in the night, and partygoers mistook it for a gunshot. The birthday girl’s mother had also made an announcement that anyone with a gun should leave the party. 

“We probably would have left,” Simpson said. “But we weren't aware of what happened before we were there.”

Everything was OK, he said, until it wasn’t.

When the first gunshot rang through the dance studio, the room fell silent. Simpson isn’t sure if the music cut off or not, but everything went quiet in his head. 

That’s when he and his friend got separated.

While Simpson was crawling to an exit, Collins was on the ground behind him. He had been shot in the face. 

Collins was also a standout high school athlete, and after taking a gap year to work on his music, he was planning to attend Louisiana State University this fall. 

Simpson’s mom said telling her son that his friend had died was one of their most difficult moments after the incident. Days later, Simpson made it out of the hospital and was able to attend Collins’ funeral in a wheelchair. 

“Crying over my friend at his funeral, I tried to leave it there,” Simpson said. “I can’t be angry. I can’t feel no type of way. They’re going through their own thing, and I’m going through mine. I can’t take whatever they did back.” 

A mother’s response

Simpson may not harbor resentment toward the shooters, but his mother, Mallory Cobb, can’t say she feels the same way. 

“I was angry,” Cobb said. “Some people’s kids didn’t live, and I hate that for their parents. Some are still in the hospital, and they didn’t deserve that. Really, when you’re at a sweet 16 birthday party, you shouldn’t have to have security. They’re just babies.”

Investigators found 89 empty shell casings at the scene. 

Six people, ranging in age from 15 to 20, have been arrested in connection with the mass shooting. The five oldest have been charged as adults in Dadeville and each face four counts of reckless murder, 24 counts of first-degree assault, and one count of third-degree assault. It could be years before any trials begin. 

The five co-defendants, if found guilty, could face 20 years to life in prison for each of the four deaths. They could also face "a minimum of 10 years with a maximum 20-year sentence on all 24 counts of first-degree assault," according to a news release from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.

“Whatever they get, they need to get,” Cobb said. “Those kids were innocent. Y’all came in there shooting at innocent people.”

What comes next

Simpson still has a ways to go before he is fully recovered from the emotional and physical trauma of the shooting, but he spends every day trying to inch closer to that point.

“I don’t want to do anything unless it’s getting me back to what I love,” he said.  

He wants to be back on the football field, playing wide receiver for the Opelika Bulldogs, as soon as his body will let him. Hopefully, he said, that will be one day this fall. 

Simpson spends at least three hours daily on physical therapy and hand-eye-coordination training. Even in the time he spent sitting down with the Montgomery Advertiser for this interview, Simpson did not stop moving his hand and leg, working to gain back strength, little by little.

“He’s always been like that,” Cobb said. “Even though he was shot all of those times, his mind was: ‘I’m not dying in here.’ He’s strong and always has been.” 

How you can help

After the shooting happened and the family found Simpson in the hospital, his aunt, Stephanie Cloud, set up a GoFundMe fundraiser to help Simpson and his mother with costs. 

All donations will go directly to Cobb, and GoFundMe has verified the fundraiser. 

Some of the other families affected by the shooting have GoFundMe pages, too, and First Baptist Church Dadeville created a fundraiser to help with funeral and medical expenses for victims and survivors. 

Hadley Hitson covers the rural South for the Montgomery Advertiser and Report for America. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser or donate to Report for America.