Student shot, left for dead, makes remarkable recovery

ATLANTA — A Georgia Tech student shot at point blank range in the chest, has made an inspiring recovery.

Now, five years after the attack that nearly claimed his life, he’s the founder of a thriving Alpharetta-based company.

Patrick Whaley will never forget the night of May 4, 2009. Three robbers shot him in the chest and left him for dead in a parking garage.

“It went through two lobes of my lung, through my liver, ruptured my inferior vena cava in my back. They had to remove about a third of my right lung,” Patrick Whaley said.

But Whaley survived and was determined to make a full recovery. He used one of his own inventions to do it.

“I noticed more improvements in those two weeks of using my shirt than I noticed in six weeks of physical therapy,” Whaley said.

Whaley tweaked a form-fitting compression shirt he used during his recovery. It is now a patented product at the foundation of his company, TITIN.

To say business is booming is an understatement.

TITIN provided training gear for the Dutch speed skating team in this year’s Winter Olympics. And the country’s largest medical distribution company is in talks to use TITIN’s products for rehab.

But one of the most rewarding parts of TITN's rapid expansion is using inventions to help in the therapy of children with autism.

“I believe that I’m here for a reason and that’s why I’m so happy to be here. It’s because I was given a second chance and I wanna make the best of it,” Whaley said.

Whaley still deals with some effects of the shooting. I’s more difficult for him to do high-end endurance sports. But through it all, he’s had an amazing attitude. He said life’s too short to sweat the the small stuff or hold onto anger, even for the three men who are now in jail for shooting him.

WSBTV