A Phoenix rabbi was out for his daily 3.5 mile run when it seems pausing for a drink of water made him a target. Rabbi Reuven Mann is guessing the attack with a pellet gun was random, maybe a juvenile prank, but the severity of the wound is nothing to laugh about.

Mann is religious about running, but his routine was cut short Monday while on 16th Street in north-central Phoenix.

“I paused to drink some water,” Mann said. “This is about 16th [Street] and Ocotillo [Road, south of Glendale Avenue,] and a car goes by, and I hear some noise and then I hear something that sounds like a pop.”

Mann wasn’t sure what happened at first, but the pain and blood soon followed the initial shock. At the hospital, doctors showed him X-rays revealing a pellet deep in his calf muscle, millimeters from a major artery.

“The pellet is in there deep inside the muscle,” he said. “The pain was getting stronger and stronger.”

Mann had been running south on 16th Street; the shooters were in a car going north. Mann didn’t get a good look at them or the car, but there are businesses with surveillance cameras at the corner of 16th Street and Glendale Avenue. Investigators are hoping those cameras captured an image.

“You can get killed with a bullet. You can get killed with a BB gun,” Mann said. “I wanted heightened awareness. These things are happening and we have to be concerned.”

Rabbi Mann should be walking normally within the week, but the pellet will stay inside him.

(Source: AZ Family)