A bullet in the head

It's 1 a.m. on Thursday, June 30, at Eight Mile and I-75, almost on the border of Hazel Park and Detroit. Mike Anton, aka Manton, singer and guitarist with folk-ish rock trio the Mantons, is in his basement messing around on his computer when he hears four distinct knocks on his front door. As a musician, Manton often gets visitors at odd hours, so this, in itself, isn't particularly unusual.

He runs upstairs and opens the main front door, though not the glass storm door in front of it, and looks out into the darkness, seeing nothing. He thinks that he's been ding-dong-ditched until he hears a loud boom and feels the pain. A bullet has gone through the glass and into his face. It has entered via his left cheek and has shattered his jaw, where it lies embedded.

Yep, Mike Anton has been shot in the fucking face.

Just two weeks later, Manton is at home talking to City Slang with more ease than his recent experience should allow. His jaw is wired, but he's making a fast and remarkable recovery. He knows he's lucky. 

"I could have died or gotten brain damage," Manton says. "My jaw got shattered and separated — the lower part. The bullet was lodged in there. I'd never been hit by a gun before. I didn't know what was going on. I backed off and I thought I'd been hit by a rocket. It was really hot and it hurt. Obviously something's wrong. I go into the bathroom to see what it is, and by that time blood's just rushing out of my face. There's blood all over the place. I thought I was gonna die. It's insane. I ran downstairs looking for my phone, because I only have this cordless phone that lies around my house and I don't know where it is half the time. I found it upstairs and called 911. I never lost consciousness or went into medical shock. They came in a minute or two. The cops were everywhere. They put me on a gurney thing and took me off to the hospital. I was there for about five days. Lucky for me, because the longer I was in, the longer it costs. I was available to recover quickly."

At the hospital, Manton was in the right hands, but he certainly wasn't out of the woods.

"They have rules in case of spine injuries," Manton said. "They had to strap my head to a board. I'm going, 'If you do that I'll choke on my blood because I'm bleeding in my mouth.' It was a bit of an argument. They decided to put me on an angle. In the trauma room, they did the same thing and laid me on my back, and I started choking on blood. I stuck my hand in my mouth and pulled out what I thought was a tooth, but I think it was a piece of my jaw, a little white piece of bone. They had me wash my mouth with saline and clean the outside with saline solution, and that was it. No stitching. They put me in the intensive care unit to wait for the right surgeon to show up and put me back together."

Unfortunately, so far, police haven't been able to identity a shooter. (Hazel Park Police didn't respond to City Slang's requests for comment.)

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