Payton Washington, one of two Texas cheerleaders shot in April after her friend accidentally opened the door of the wrong car, is speaking out for the first time went into detail about the devastating situation that changed her life.
“My spleen was shattered. My stomach had two holes in it. And my diaphragm had two holes in it. And then they had to remove a lobe from my pancreas. I had 32 staples,” Washington said in an exclusive interview with Good Morning America’s co-anchor Michael Strahan. “I was actually texting and [eating] Twizzlers,” Washington recalled of the moments before someone opened the door of her teammate’s car. She said she could hear gunfire but didn’t know where it was coming from, but her “ears were ringing so loud” she knew the shots had to be close.
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When the cheerleaders were driving away trying to get to safety Washington said that’s when she realized she was hit by bullets. “We were tryin’ to get away. I really was just telling myself to breathe. It was hard to breathe because of my diaphragm,” she said. “I was trying to stay as calm as possible for the other people in the car. I could tell how sad and scared they were. I saw blood on [my passenger] seat. So I knew somewhere I was bleeding. But I had so much adrenaline, I didn’t really know where,” said Washington. “And then whenever we pulled over and opened the door, I was like, ‘Oh, gotta throw up.’ And that’s when I was throwing up blood.”
Before the shooting took place Washington just got accepted into Baylor university, but after getting hit three times in the shooting she explained how hard it is for her to do simple things like getting out of the bed.
“It was hard … hurting to walk or stand is really weird when, a week before, you were doing a bunch of flips, running the track, and doing long jump, and all this stuff,” said Washington.
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The young woman knows it is a terrible situation that happened to her but she still finds pride in being alive and not dwelling on the past. “He did what he did, and I’m just gonna try and get through it. There’s no point in me really thinking about what he did,” she said.
“You can literally do anything if you push and you persevere,” she said. “Don’t doubt yourself ever because you can do anything as long as you’re putting your 120% into it.”