Danny "Bud" Williams, then a 16-year-old basketball phenom, was shot nine years outside his Buffalo home while playing basketball, an innocent victim of gun violence.
Today, Williams, 25, is out of school and working - but he never attained his dream of playing Division 1 college basketball.
The man who shot Williams, Cornell Caldwell, served his sentence, and was released from prison earlier this year.
The gun trafficker who sold the 9mm handgun used in the shooting, James Nigel Bostic, also served his time and been released from prison.
Still on trial, however, is the gun industry.
The New York Appellate Court in Rochester today is scheduled to hear arguments addressing why the manufacturer, distributor and dealer of the gun used to shoot Williams should or should not be held liable for the serious wound Williams suffered in 2003.
So far, the courts have sided with the gun industry.
A Supreme Court Judge in April 2011 dismissed the lawsuit Williams and his father, Eddie, filed against the gun industry. Justice Frederick J. Marshall ruled that the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act immunized the gun companies from any liability.
But Williams' attorneys are appealing that decision, arguing that the federal law should not shield the gun industry from engaging in negligent and unlawful activities.
The case marks the first time the issue has been before an appeals court.
"We are better than a nation that allows gun companies to knowingly supply criminal traffickers with hundreds of guns and then receive special exemptions from the civil justice system - exemptions that no one else in society enjoy," said Jonathan Lowy, attorney for the Brady Center.
The Washington-D.C.-based Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence as well as Buffalo attorney Terrence Connors represent Williams in court. Connors and the Brady Center took up Williams' case after it was featured in a series of articles on gun trafficking The Buffalo News published in 2005.
The News' series, "The Damage Done," explained how Williams, then 16 and a star athlete at McKinley High School, when he was shot in a drive-by shooting near his Girard Place home. The gunman had mistaken Williams for someone else.
Williams survived the bullet wound that ripped through his stomach, but the injury cut short what many believed was a promising basketball career. Rather than winning a scholarship to a Division 1 college team, Williams attended Erie Community College.
The gun used to shoot Williams was among 250 Bostic purchased at an Ohio gun show. Bostic, a Buffalo native, then sold the handguns on the streets of Buffalo. In addition to the Williams shooting, the guns were tied to a series of other crimes in Buffalo as well as in the other states where they eventually showed up.
When Williams' case against the gun industry was initially heard in Supreme Court in 2010, attorneys for the gun maker, gun distributor and gun dealer argued that the case should be dismissed based of legislation Congress enacted in 2005 that limited the ability to file a civil suit against the gun industry for crimes committed with handguns. The judge agreed.
Lowy unsuccessfully argued at that time that the Williams case met exemptions included in the federal law for neglience or illegal activity by the gun instustry.
Connors and Lowy also argued that it was obvious Bostic was using his Ohio girlfriends to purchase guns for him, and it should have also been obvious to the gun dealer, Charles Brown, that the guns would be used to commit crimes.
Most of the guns were Hi-Points, a relatively inexpensive handgun manufactured by Beemiller Co. of Ohio. More than 13,000 of Beemiller's Hi-Point guns have been used in crimes, Connors told the court.
Attorneys for the gun industry had responded that Bostic had told Brown, the gundealer, he planned to open a gun show once obtaining a license to sell firearms in Ohio, and that he was buying the guns in anticipation of that.

email: sschulman@buffnews.com