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Ross Capicchioni was a teenager who was shot several times and required emergency surgery.

He reported that he had been shot by someone he knew who was undergoing a gang-initiation. He claims the shooter was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Ross Capicchioni had known his potential murderer for ten years and believed him to be a friend. [...] It was only a moment after getting out of the car together before Ross was shot in his arm. [...] Ross took damage to his head but recalled that he was still conscious when the friend hit him in the face with the butt of the gun. [...] The shooter was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

He tells his story in this 2013 YouTube video interview..

This claim inspired a song by Joyner Lucas with ~10 million views.

However, his story is short on specific details - like the name of the shooter and the case number.

He addresses some of the skepticism here on a 2014 Facebook post:

Lol at the haters for saying I put out a fake story. [...] the reason there is no news article or anything is cuz when the Macomb Daily came to my house " that's a newspaper" and wanted to do a story about me I said no. Another reason why no one knows who shot me or proof that I went to court is 1. Because no one needs to know who tried to kill me, and he doesn't need a shout out or fame for his attempt at murder. And 2, there is no proof of the court date and trial is because I didn't want it to be seen by the public. If anyone was gonna share my story to the world it was gonna be me.

I don't see any actual information about the crime. How do we know he was shot randomly as part of a gang-initiation and not as part of a gang-on-gang violence, or as an innocent bystander, or a drug deal or whatever?

Is there any media coverage or public records the substantiate this being a claim of random violence from a friend to get initiated into a gang?

The YouTuber MrNikhilking seems to have broken this story. At t=1:16 you can see the date mentioned of the incident, "June 6, 2007". He claims in this video that he woke up three days later and was reunited with his parents. He said he was sent home on the fifth day, and that on the next day the FBI had approached him with the name. That tells me the case must have been filed beteween June 6, and June 16 (giving wiggle room).

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    I find it suspicious that he has a convenient excuse for there being no physical evidence at all at what happened. Also, he describes the attack as him getting out of the car and then being shot with a shotgun. Those aren't exactly easy to conceal, which means that someone would have had to bring the gun to his "friend" without him noticing it. And he apparently walked a decent distance with his arm hanging off, a shotgun blast to the chest, and a graze to the side of his head? Then the whole video starts to sound like generic out of body experience stuff.
    – DenisS
    Commented Oct 9, 2018 at 0:01
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    And I know he has a reason for not having a news article, but someone being shot and in critical condition would make the news regardless of whether or not he decided to be interviewed.
    – DenisS
    Commented Oct 9, 2018 at 0:03
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    There was an AMA request on reddit that was never fulfilled, but a lot of people in that thread saying they went to school with him and that he was lying about the whole thing, it was a drug deal gone wrong.
    – DenisS
    Commented Oct 9, 2018 at 0:08
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    Every time this question flits past my vision, I wonder what makes it notable. Some YouTuber claims something, some other YouTuber makes a video...
    – shoover
    Commented Dec 9, 2020 at 22:12
  • @shoover Despite having launched a twice-Grammy nominated star's career and being a hit single, the story itself seems notable if for no reason other than having been covered by Oprah... youtube.com/watch?v=Hzyl2LZa_TY
    – Evan Carroll
    Commented Dec 10, 2020 at 0:23

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If there were any truth to this sensational story, I find it unlikely that the Detroit Free Press or any other regional outlet would not have covered it. I've searched widely in news databases like Gale and Lexis Nexis but only come up with references to the song. There are a lot of false urban legends about gang initiations and I strongly suspect this is one of them.

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