It was a cool, dark evening—as mild as winter could be in South Africa. Nine people just walked out of the gates of the Johannesburg International Airport. They rented two cars and embarked on their way to the neighboring capital of Pretoria. They came with a mission: to file a lawsuit against two visiting Chinese officials for their role in orchestrating a gigantic persecution campaign against practitioners of the Falun Gong meditation practice in China. It quite naturally fell on David Liang, a cabbie then living in Australia, to drive one of the rentals.
About 30 miles into the trip, Liang noticed a light-colored car coming up from behind. As it was coming to pass, he heard a noise. Suddenly, he felt a searing pain in his feet. At the same moment, the car’s tires blew up. He realized they were shot at. He was shot. The bullets went straight through both of his feet and shattered the bones in his right foot, leaving a hole the size of a golf ball. The overwhelming pain nearly shut down his consciousness. The pain was too much for him to step on the brakes. The car was uncontrollably hurling down the road at about 75 mph, veering closer and closer to the opposing traffic. By sheer miracle, the car didn’t flip over or crash. It gradually slowed down to a stop on the shoulder. Liang couldn’t open the door. Senses blurred, he remembers somebody helped him to get to a nearby hospital….