ELYRIA — Zaki Touma left his war-torn homeland of Lebanon decades ago because of the violence.

He came to America, married, had three children and opened the popular downtown Elyria eatery Zaki’s in 2002.

But on Monday night, violence still caught up to Touma and his family.

He got a phone call at his Bay Village home telling him to come to MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland because his 17-year-old son, also named Zaki Touma, had been shot four times.

“I had a heavy heart that day,” Touma said Wednesday as he took a break from cooking breakfast at the restaurant.

Cleveland police Patrol Officer Nancy Dominik said the younger Zaki, a senior at Bay Village High School, and his friend, 19-year-old Mosa Shafik of North Olmsted, were driving around, looking for a friend on West 83rd Street before the shooting.

When the pair stopped the 2006 Nissan Frontier that Shafik was driving because they were lost, a man came up and asked for a lighter.

Dominik said Shafik tossed a lighter from the driver’s window out and over the cab to the man, who remained insistent that the friends roll down their windows. When Zaki did so, she said, the man stuck a gun inside and began firing.

Touma said his son told him he pushed the gun away and Shafik hit the gas.

But as he sped away, Dominik said, Shafik collapsed from a single gunshot wound and crashed into a tree about a block away.

Zaki also had been shot but managed to dial 911 on his cell phone and was waiting outside the truck when police and EMS arrived, his father said.

Zaki was hit in the right cheek, under the chin and in the right leg — where a bullet remains lodged, his father said. The fourth bullet came to rest next to his spine. His son, a wrestler and lacrosse player, came a hair’s breadth from being paralyzed, Touma said.

Zaki has returned home to recover from the trauma of losing a close friend who had graduated from Bay last year with Zaki’s older sister, Zaki’s father said. His mother, Josephine Touma, who runs the restaurant with her husband, and his younger sister are caring for him.

Touma said he’s hopeful his son will recover quickly enough to return to school, graduate and head to college in the fall, although he said one of the schools his son was considering attending — Cleveland State University, where Shafik had been studying — is probably off the list now.

Dominik said no arrests have been made and police have only a vague description of the shooter. Police did recover a gun nearby on Wednesday, but Dominik said tests still are needed to determine if it’s the gun that killed Shafik and wounded Zaki.

Touma said he can’t understand what led to the shooting. He doesn’t believe the friends had done anything wrong and probably just ended up getting lost on the wrong street.

“They’re excellent kids,” he said.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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