JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The 28-year-old Navy man shot two weeks ago when he came home and found a burglar in his garage doesn't want to show his face because the man who shot him is still on the loose. But he did tell Channel 4's Emily Turner about the experience.
"I don't remember hearing a gunshot," Brian Plauche said. "I don't remember feeling anything. I just remember he let go and ran off."
Plauche has just returned to his Avondale home from a pre-dawn walk when he opened the door of the garage because he thought he'd left a light on. Instead he found a burglar.
Plauche said he confronted him because the intruder was a smaller man, and Plauche didn't know he had a gun.
"I looked down noticed that my shirt had been blown open. I was holding my abdomen. I looked down and saw a little bit of blood and I started piecing it together -- that I'd been shot."
Plauche drive himself to Shands Jacksonville Medical Center rather than St. Vincent's, which was much closer, because he was aware enough to remember Shands had a trauma center.
The bullet nicked his colon, but surgeons sewed him up and he's already walking around. As for the bad guy, he hopes they find him.
Plauche said the decision to fight is what got him shot.
"I spent a lot of time in the hospital going through the what ifs, and I don't know if I may have saved my life by not having a gun," Plauche said. "I don't really feel scared, per se. I think I just got unlucky in some ways."
Police have released a sketch of the gunman and ask that anyone who has any information about the shooting call Crime Stoppers at 866-845-TIPS.