The 17-year-old who shot Ricky Pearsall in August on a sidewalk near Union Square during a robbery attempt is facing the possibility of spending his life in prison. The teen’s fate is in the hands of the justice system, but there is someone outside that system who might be able to lend the kid a helping hand: Ricky Pearsall.

The San Francisco 49ers’ rookie wide receiver said Monday that he is open to meeting the man who shot him. The suspect’s attorney said he is open to arranging a meeting between the two. After this column published online on Tuesday, a Pearsall representative told the Chronicle he would not be meeting with the suspect at this time, but did not close the door to it happening in the future.

If it does, it would be a rare occurrence. “You don’t get a lot of gunshot victims that would go to bat for the person who shot ’em,” said Bob Dunlap, a public defender in the juvenile division of the public defender’s office and the alleged attacker’s attorney.

The teenager, who is from Tracy, has been in juvenile detention since the incident. His next court appearance is Thursday, at which he may learn whether or not the district attorney will seek to try him as an adult. If the DA chooses that route, a judge will then decide if the teen will be tried as an adult. If he is, he faces the possibility of life in prison for the charges, which include attempted murder, attempted robbery and gun possession.

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Monday morning, during the 49ers’ locker cleanout day and media availability, I asked Pearsall whether he ever wondered what caused his attacker to commit the alleged crime. “Yeah, I’m curious,” Pearsall said, “but sometimes you just don’t got answers for that. For me, I don’t got answers, I don’t know where he came from, what environment he grew up in. … I don’t know how he grew up, so I can’t judge him as a man just based on one action that he made, as violent a crime as it was.

“God forbid him doing it to somebody else, I don’t want that to ever happen, so whatever has to go into that. But for me, just being able to forgive him. At the end of the day, I have to be able to forgive him and have that weight off my chest, know what I mean? At some point I do want to talk to the kid, and if I can create an impact on him in any way, I think that would be really big, and I think I’d definitely be open to doing that, for sure.”

Pearsall added, “I’m a man of God, and I believe in forgiveness, you know, and I feel like being a man, at some point you gotta be able to forgive somebody.” Pearsall might one day get that chance. Later Monday, I spoke with Dunlap, and with no prompting he brought up the possibility of a face-to-face meeting between Pearsall and the teenager.

Such a meeting, if it ever happened, surely would benefit Dunlap’s client. As the attorney said, “I think it would be a huge thumb on the scale.” Dunlap hopes to show the court that his client is remediable, and a face-to-face apology surely would help make that case. Even if the teen is not tried as an adult, Dunlap said, “There’s still a long way to go, and I think a lot could be gained by those two getting together – for their lives, more than for the case itself.”

Dunlap said he is a strong proponent of restorative justice. “The system has tried to move in the direction of restorative justice,” Dunlap said, “one aspect of which is getting victims and kids who commit the crimes together. It’s in its infancy, let’s put it that way. This could be a huge leap forward, not just for this case but for the process itself.”

Dunlap said his client wrote an apology letter to Pearsall, which the attorney delivered to the prosecution, but he has no idea whether Pearsall has seen the letter. Not much has been made public about the alleged attacker, since he is a juvenile. Dunlap verified that the accused was on track to graduate early from high school, and had no prior arrests.

“He’s got some business pending in San Joaquin (County), but no priors,” Dunlap said. “Never been on probation, nothing. He’s a really nice kid, he just got in way over his head with some business he had no business being involved in.” That business ended on that Aug. 31 afternoon, when the 17-year-old confronted Pearsall on a sidewalk of a busy downtown shopping district. Pearsall was carrying two shopping bags, one from Luis Vuitton, the other from Rimowa, a premium luggage retailer. He was wearing a Rolex watch valued at about $9,000 and a gold chain worth about $30,000. The attacker, according to the police report, told Pearsall to “give me everything you got!”

One witness told Channel 7 news that Pearsall “was not giving up without a fight. He’s brave.” Resisting a gunpoint robbery surely is not a recommended strategy, but Pearsall is a young man who makes his living by forcibly resisting strong men who are violently trying to deprive him of what’s his, the football.

Right or wrong, Pearsall apparently resisted. The teenager’s gun was fired three times during the scuffle. One bullet went into Pearsall’s chest and out his back, one went into the alleged assailant’s arm and exited, and the third bullet went into a nearby car, thus an added criminal charge of vandalism.

Although Pearsall miraculously escaped serious injury, he at least momentarily feared for his life, asking a police officer, “Am I going to die?” Three months later, Pearsall told Chronicle reporter Eric Branch that he still looks over his shoulder when walking alone, and, “Certain things pop up and it’s kind of like, ‘Whoa, that kind of reminds me of that situation.’ It puts goosebumps on my arms.”

Pearsall has met with multiple therapists provided by the 49ers, but said Monday he hadn’t really taken time to fully address the psychological fallout from the attack. “As far as, like, long-term (therapy) stuff, I’ll definitely be doing some stuff in the offseason,” he said. “Obviously we were kind of in the middle of the season when that happened, I didn’t really have no time to really digest anything, or fix anything. I’ll finally get some time and be able to lock in and focus on that.”

Maybe, one day, that focus would include a meeting with the man who shot him. “I give Ricky a lot of credit for seeing it the way he’s seeing it,” Dunlap said when told what Pearsall had said earlier that day about a possible meeting. “He’s taking the high road. As I always say, ‘Take the high road, there’s less traffic.'”