“I dwelled on it a little bit after I got shot, and then I realized it wasn’t healthy.”
Jake E. Lee spoke about his struggles with recovery after being shot three times.
In October 2024, Jake E. Lee was walking his dog in the early morning. It seemed it would be a day like any other, but on the way back home, he ran into a couple of criminals who were trying to steal his neighbour’s motorcycle.
Lee confronted them verbally, and they responded by shooting him three times. Lee was lucky to survive and was placed in intensive care. Considering the number of spent shell casings, he was fortunate to have only been shot three times.
At the time, Lee revealed his arm had been hit – a critical blow to a guitarist, or almost any musician in general. He described the damage, saying:
“The first shot to hit me was in my left forearm. Entered about an inch below the elbow on the underside. Exited topside. It felt like a burn. Not particularly painful, just like a quick burning sensation. I thought it must have been a graze. Fortunately, it missed any bones, and my elbow joint, and has healed remarkably quickly.”
“The scars aren’t much bigger or darker than some of my age spots and I’d probably have to point them out for you to notice. All the fingers still move well. Initially lost the feeling in the back of my hand but it has been slowly coming back. In the spirit of giving thanks, I am most thankful my dog wasn’t hurt, and also the damage to my fretting arm was minimal.”
Lee managed to recover from the dark ordeal and recently appeared at Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s farewell concert, playing two classic Ozzy songs: “The Ultimate Sin” and “Shot in the Dark.” All things considered, he seems to be doing well, and his playing ability is intact.
In an appearance on SiriusXM’s “Ozzy’s Boneyard,” Lee opened up on these unfortunate events. He was asked if he noticed any troubles with his guitar playing. The musician noted he’d had problems that had nothing to do with the shooting, but with arthritis. He said (via Blabbermouth):
“Well, I hadn’t been playing guitar for a couple of years because this wrist was killing me [due to] arthritis. I finally got X-rays, and they said there’s no cartilage left. And so it’s bone on bone whenever I move it. It didn’t feel that good. So, I started doing rehab for it, and it started to take a lot of exercising, a lot of stretching, and it was getting better. And then I walked my dog.”
Further in, Lee was asked if the shooting changed his outlook on life. Here, the guitarist opened up on his struggles with mental health after the incident, noting he no longer feels the same way about the world, but that he’s slowly recovering from that too:
“A little bit. A little bit… I don’t wanna think about it. I dwelled on it a little bit after I got shot, and then I realized it wasn’t healthy. And so I just kind of pushed it aside and didn’t think about it too much. ‘Cause I mean, yeah, the world got darker, more dangerous, not as fun after that night. And since then, I don’t think about it too much. And the world’s getting back to where I can enjoy it.”
