Virginia Shooting Survivor Had Played Dead To Live Through It

By R. Siva Kumar - 17 Sep '15 10:11AM

Amazingly, she had survived through an on-air shooting in Virgina, where two journalists were killed.

Vicki Gardner, 62, explains all the details about the shooting. At the time, she had thought that she was going to be executed.

It was her first public statement since the shooting. The Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce executive clarified to "On the Record w/Greta Van Susteren" in an interview Tuesday night that she had been on the ground, a sitting duck for the gunman Vester Lee Flanagan, even after the WDBJ-TV employees Alison Parker and Adam Ward got shot on Aug. 26, according to the New York Daily News.

"I didn't know where he was," Gardner said. "I saw movement and then, gunfire. Lots and lots of gunfire. From that point, it was very chaotic."

As soon as Flanagan began to shoot, she started to play possum.

"The only thing I could think of was 'play dead,' " Gardner said. "I just fell to the ground as though I had been hit."

When she got hit at the back, Gardner assumed that she was going to be hit in her head next. Hence, she just decided to lie down and pretend that she was dead, in order to avoid the fatal shot.

"I knew, the next shot, he was just gonna shoot me in the head, because that was what he was doing," she said. "When he shot me in the back, I said, 'I'm gonna be paralyzed, darn'. And then, I waited. They say the world goes in front of you, and it did real fast, and I said, 'I'm ready, I'm ready.'"

"Had I continued to stand, I would not be here talking to you," she continued.

Even though she was not paralysed, she had to get a kidney and part of her colon removed. On September 7, she got released from a Roanoke hospital.

"I'm happy to be here," she said, according to hngn.