LEWISTON – Shooting victim James DeHart was back at home Tuesday night and so was the bullet that struck him the night before.

Recuperating from a gunshot wound, DeHart said surgeons had opted to leave the slug in his left hip.

“They said it would cause more damage to try and take it out,” he said.

A night after the confrontation on Horton Street that led to the shooting, DeHart remembered it vividly. He recalled exchanging words with a man who had ordered him to stop cutting through the yard. He remembered the man standing eight or 10 feet away and pulling out a gun.

He remembered the blast and the pain in his leg.

“It sounded like a cannon going off,” DeHart said. “I thought, ‘Crap. I’ve been hit.’ It looked to me like the guy wanted to shoot again.”

But no second shot was fired. DeHart didn’t realize it until later but he started running a moment after the bullet hit him.

“There was an adrenaline rush, I guess,” he said. “I (hurried). I just wanted to get home.”

Instead, DeHart spent the night at Central Maine Medical Center. The man accused in the shooting, 56-year-old Kenneth Phipps, was taken to the Androscoggin County Jail, where he remained Tuesday night.

DeHart admitted telling Phipps to mind his own business when the confrontation started, but insisted he did not have a weapon of his own when he was shot. Normally, he would carry a utility knife in a sheath, he said. But since he was wearing pants without belt loops, he had left it at home.

At nightfall, DeHart was staying off his feet as much as possible. When he had to move around, it was with the help of crutches and a walker. He lives in a second floor apartment.

“It kills me going up and down the stairs,” he said.

Almost as painful as the gunshot wound was the irony of it. DeHart said he has been out of work since November due to chronic pain in his right hip. He takes shots for it and favors his right side.

“And then I get shot in the other side,” he said.

Then there was the matter of jangled nerves. DeHart said he had not been outside much since he was released from the hospital. He did not see any long outings in his future, either.

“I heard a car backfire today and it jump started my heart,” he said. “I don’t think I want to go back out for a while.”