Wichita ? Bruce Risinger and his family know their story about the day they saw Pope John Paul II shot in St. Peter’s Square is a little hard to believe.

But a faded newspaper photo Risinger’s sister sent him after the May 13, 1981, attempted assassination of the pope appears to show him and his two sons in a crowd of people watching the pope slumped over and being helped by assistants.

And if the video Risinger shot of the ordeal hadn’t been confiscated by Italian authorities, the family might have even more proof of their brush with history.

“All of a sudden it goes from everyone trying to shake hands with the pope, to everyone crying,” said Nick Risinger, who was 6 at the time of the shooting.

Nick has faced his share of disbelief when he told people of his family’s encounter. When he was in middle school, he wrote an essay detailing the story, but his teacher wrote him a note in red ink suggesting the tale was just a figment of the boy’s imagination.

“Honey, the pope was never shot,” his mother, Charlotte, remembers the note reading.

“After that, I never told anyone I was there,” Nick said.

But it happened. Nick, his parents — who now live in Wichita — and his older brother and sister were visiting religious sites with a busload of tourists from the Leighton Barracks in Wuerzburg, Germany.

Nick remembers shaking the pope’s hand just before the shooting. Bruce Risinger was filming the pope with a video camera while Charlotte snapped pictures. Siblings Tony, 9, and Lauren, 12, also were at the front of the huge crowd, straining to touch the pope.

“There was a scuffle, a great hubbub,” Bruce said. “The Swiss guards started chasing someone.”

Another woman in the tour group, Rose Hall, also was shot.

A Turkish man, Mehmet Ali Agca, was arrested for the shooting and later convicted.

Not long after the shots rang out, Italian police gathered up all tourists who had film — including Bruce and Charlotte Risinger — and sped them off in police cars. Their three children were left behind with the tour group.

“It was really weird,” Lauren said. “Now that I’m a mom, I can’t imagine anyone taking me away from my kids in a foreign country.

“I usually say that it was one of those moments where I realized the world can be a very scary place. To witness it was kind of eye-opening to me.”

Once at the police station, the Risingers handed over their film to a policeman. Charlotte said he just laughed when she asked if they could get the film back.

Someone from the RAI, the official broadcasting agency of the Italian government, called a few weeks later asking for permission to use the footage Bruce had recorded. He signed it over and still has a copy of the release.