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  WINDY CITY TIMES

Left For Dead, Pebbles Finds Courage to Testify
by Cathy Seabaugh
2003-01-15

This article shared 2595 times since Wed Jan 15, 2003
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Adrian 'Pebbles' Perez was shot and left for dead July 27, 1999 on Chicago's South Side. Her friend was murdered, and Pebbles spoke out.

Adrian 'Pebbles' Perez boarded a flight from the West Coast in the summer of 1999, headed for Chicago to visit a friend and prepare for the annual Miss Continental contest, a crown she hoped to wear. The female impersonator and lip-syncing performer was 28 years old at the time, happy with the life she'd built for herself in California. When she arrived at the home of friend Buretta Williams that late July day, Pebbles sensed trouble.

'When I stepped out of that taxi at her new apartment—Buretta moved a lot—I got a bad vibe,' Perez said, sitting by her hotel room window last Friday, Chicago high rises and Lake Michigan in the background. 'I didn't know what was going to happen. I told people, 'I have to get out of here.' Everybody I talked to, I said, 'Something is going to … I just feel … I need to get out of this apartment.' I felt something was going to happen.'

The audience at Miss Continental 1999 never saw Pebbles perform. While the competition wooed judges over the Labor Day Weekend, 'Pebbles' Perez lay in a Northwestern Hospital intensive care unit, the victim of three gunshots. Williams, whom Perez had known for three years, was dead from a single gunshot to the head.

Time has passed. The three young men who committed the crime are behind bars. Perez returned to Chicago last week for what, hopefully, will be the last time she must publicly revisit the hideous crime that took place July 27, 1999, altering her life forever.

Wearing a cheery, cherry-red hooded shirt, the front zipper pulled low enough to reveal substantial cleavage, Pebbles talked calmly about the past 3-1/2 years, visibly unstirred by vivid memories of the night she nearly died. Her assailant, charged with murder (of Williams) in the first degree, attempted murder (of Perez), robbery and attempted robbery, was found guilty Jan. 9, 2003, on all four counts. Sentencing of Michael Key will take place Feb. 28 and Perez took her opportunity to tell the court what she believed would be just punishment.

'I recommended he get life, to never see daylight or never be out,' she said. 'That's what I'd be happy with.'

To fully understand Perez's struggles the first year after the crime, one must remember her vocation. Not only would she be dealing with the mental images and all the emotional phases that victims of violent crime pass through, physical challenges stood like an Everest before her.

Though both victims were transgendered individuals, Perez believes the sole motive was robbery, not a hate crime. One of the convicted men, Spanish 'Spade' Brown, had an on-going physical relationship with Williams and knew she had been saving money for a sex-change operation. It was Brown who initiated the 3 a.m. visit to Williams' apartment that fateful night, bringing with him Key, a stranger to Williams.

'My assumption is that (Key) didn't know what he was getting into at first,' Perez said. 'Like, I think Spade and these gangs told him 'I know this girl who has this nice place, this big ol' safe in her room.' (Key) started noticing things. He said, 'Are these faggots? Are you fuckin' this faggot?' Spade would say no.'

Crucial to Perez having any chance of survival was the appearance of a former Williams roommate who, before any shots had been fired, called up to the third-floor apartment to be let in. Typical procedure, Perez explained, was that Williams would drop the apartment keys out the window so a friend could let himself in. One of the assailants dropped the keys out the window, but Perez screamed while Williams, her hands tied behind her back, jumped near the window.

'I screamed to him to call the police and they started shooting after that,' Perez explained, 'because they were going to try to bring him up to set him up because they weren't done taking everything they wanted yet. (The friend) saw Buretta up by the window and not saying anything, so he knew something was up and ran off to a neighbor's house and called the police. They got there within 10 minutes, I heard.'

The friend's reaction and a quick response from Chicago police, without doubt, saved her life.

'It happened so fast,' she said, recounting the moments before she was shot. 'When I saw him reach for (Williams) and heard the gun, I was like, 'I know I'm going to be next.' I didn't see exactly where he shot her. I was on the ground. I couldn't move. I didn't know what to do, but I knew he was going to put the gun on me next. He pointed the gun at my head, but I turned my head, so (the bullet) grazed my head, but it was still that much deep. (Perez used her thumb and forefinger to display about an inch-wide gap.) I was lucky. So when I fell back, I closed my eyes like I was dead. I didn't know if I was or not.'

'He shot me two more times. He shot me in my face, then he shot me in my arm. Then he ran off.'

The second bullet had entered Perez's left cheek. The third struck the top of her left forearm, leaving a hole as it exited the other side. Uncertain of her body's contortion at the time, Perez believes her arm might have been lying across her chest and that Key was attempting to shoot her in the heart.

Perez was told 80 percent of her blood had drained onto the floor of Williams' apartment.

'If it weren't for the great surgeons at Northwestern, I wouldn't be here,' Perez praised. 'That was one lucky thing—I was in the right place—because they have good surgeons here in Chicago. They said I was near dead. I heard I got two surgeries after I was taken to the hospital before I woke up.'

Perez, who had no health insurance, insists she received the best of care. Hospitalized for six weeks at Northwestern, she began the long journey toward recovery—alone until a friend flew into town 2-3 weeks later.

'I couldn't talk—they had my mouth wired,' she said. 'My jaw was shattered from the gunshot. They had to scrape bone off my hip to use for my jaw. I had four or five surgeries for my jaw. I couldn't use this (left) hand. The gunshot messed up the joints and I had to do therapy to work with my hand. I had to learn to walk again because after they (took bone from the hip) I couldn't walk. They had to do a tracheotomy on my neck because after all that blood went through my neck, I couldn't breathe.

'Basically, I was just weak. I had to build myself, work my muscles again. It was a lot, a lot of therapy I had to do. I was willing to do it.'

In the comfort of her mother's home, Perez found solitude and began taking on the unrelenting challenges of rehabilitation.

Friends in the female impersonator world held fundraisers on Perez's behalf. When Portland's event took place Oct. 6, 1999—10 weeks after the shooting—Perez took the stage in costume.

'I was so weak,' she said. 'I was shaking. I couldn't really move my lips. I knew it wasn't the same, so that hurt. It was hard; took a lot out of me. Right after I did that, when I realized I wasn't the same as I used to be, I was more determined to be the way I was. In December (1999), I started doing shows. I was still weak, but I was just doing them. After maybe a year, everything was working like clockwork. I was doing shows that I was satisfied with. It was hard to get back to it because I had to learn how to talk, like certain words I didn't know how to say because I'm still a little paralyzed in the tip of my tongue. It was hard for me, really difficult, to work my mouth again. I'd practice every day. I'm thankful I can still do it today.'

The need to return to a Chicago courtroom has pulled her off the stage and out of the Pacific Northwest on four different occasions. When Perez first awoke in the hospital, she was able to give the name of one assailant and descriptions of the other two. In January 2000, the Cook County State's Attorney's office brought her to Illinois for the lineup of suspects.

'I've always been the type of person to put things behind me good, like act like it never happened to me,' she said. 'So I was preparing myself anyway, so it wasn't really hard until you get there and see them. Of course, you get a little shaky. Well, I got a little shaky, but it wasn't hard for me because I knew they were locked up, they couldn't get me.'

Perez attended the trials of all three accused. When Key is sentenced the last day of February, perhaps Perez finally can close this chapter of her life.

'Of course, it's always going to be in my mind of what happened to me,' she said, 'but I think now since I know they've all been prosecuted, especially him, the shooter, as long as he's behind bars the rest of his life, I feel like I can move on.'

When the curtains part these days in Portland, Perez's act is a featured weekend attraction at Embers. She seems to be moving on.


This article shared 2595 times since Wed Jan 15, 2003
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