Girl Shot in Head by Jealous Baseball Coach Leaves Hospital

SACRAMENTO — A teen-age baseball star who was shot in the head along Interstate 80 three weeks ago during rush hour by her jealous baseball league coach has left the hospital and returned home.

Susanna Jacobs, 16, told the Sacramento Bee that the last thing she remembers about the Aug. 10 attack is jumping out of her coach’s pickup truck at 55 m.p.h. after he showed her a gun and said he was going to kill her.

Jacobs said her baseball coach and friend of six years, Jesse Aguilar, resented her friendship with another teen-age girl.

The star North Highlands pitcher, who played both softball and baseball, told the Bee that she was riding in Aguilar’s truck when he said: “Susanna, I don’t want you hanging around your best friend anymore.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I want you hanging around with me.”

“Why you got to be like that?”

“Susanna, I’m going to kill you.”

She said Aguilar showed her a gun and she leaped out of his truck. The next thing she remembers is waking up in UC Davis Medical Center, which she left Thursday.

Jacobs said she has no memory of hitting the ground or seeing the drivers who stopped to help her. She does not remember how Aguilar stopped, pushed his way through the crowd, and shot her in the head.

Aguilar, 42, then turned the gun on himself as two law enforcement officers in the crowd watched helplessly. He died instantly.

Doctors removed a bullet from beneath Jacobs’ brain and sealed her left ear canal. Later they operated again to remove a bullet fragment pressing on a nerve. She is permanently deaf in her left ear and has minor problems with short-term memory.

She cannot smile with the left side of her face or open her mouth more than a quarter of an inch. Light hurts her eyes and she takes heavy doses of painkillers.

Family and friends are raising money to pay her medical expenses.

Jacobs told the Bee that she will resume training for next year’s softball season during her recovery, adding, “There’s nothing that they’re stopping me from doing.”