Aiexpress – Thank goodness they called her mother.
An Alabama lady who was hit by a terrorist-driven pickup truck on New Year’s Day and then shot in the foot during the attack said her friends contacted her mother for help as she lay bleeding on Bourbon Street.
In an interview with NBC News on Friday, Alexis Scott-Windham revealed that her mother, Tryphena Scott-Windham, told her friends to build a tourniquet to limit her blood flow.
“So they took my sock off my left foot,” she told me. “They tied it around my ankle to cut out the circulation.”
Then, Scott-Windham claimed, a stranger drove her to a local hospital. “I’m so thankful to him,” she remarked.
Tryphena Scott-Windham stated she learnt how to apply tourniquets “from watching TV.”
“So I just told my daughter’s friend to just tie her other sock around her leg so she wouldn’t bleed so heavy,” she told NBC News in an interview. “I just blurted it out.” “I was in complete panic mode.”
Scott-Windham’s astonishing account emerged two days after a US Army veteran from Texas, who officials say declared his allegiance for the Islamic State terrorist group, crashed his rented vehicle into a crowd of revelers, killing 14 and injured many more.
The FBI and police have stated that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was encouraged to commit mass murder by ISIS but most likely acted alone.
Scott-Windham, 23, resides in Mobile with her year-old daughter, Skai Marie Scott. She had traveled to New Orleans with a group of friends to party. “It was a great vibe,” she stated.
As the night progressed, she stated, they stopped at a pizza for a snack only to discover that the kitchen had already closed.
Scott-Windham stated that while her friends were using the pizzeria’s toilet, she stood on the sidewalk outside and heard a revving engine followed by what sounded like a succession of loud explosions.
Scott-Windham stated she spotted the white pickup truck approaching her from the left.
“He was running over people like they were nothing, like they were speed bumps, like he would just run them over,” she told me.
Scott-Windham claimed she attempted to flee, but the truck clipped the back of her right foot and she fell hard.
The survivor then reported she heard gunfire.
“That’s when I tried to run, but I couldn’t,” she recalled. “I knew there was something wrong with my foot.” I assumed it was a fractured bone or something, but it wasn’t. “My feet had started leaking.”
“I was bleeding a lot,” she explained.
Scott-Windham stated that she was also instantly aware of the destruction surrounding her. She remembered seeing one person lying face down, and another with his eyes wide and blood streaming down his face.
“As I rise up, I notice a dead body on the side of me,” she explained, adding that her immediate thought was, “Jesus, Jesus. Please let me make it home.”
Scott-Windham said she looked around for her buddy Brandon Whitsett, 22, who was also hurt in the attack, as she tried to get out of harm’s way.
That’s when police arrived, she added, and an officer swiftly examined her damaged foot before radioing for an ambulance to arrive.
“He was like, ‘We have a GSW,'” she explained, using the acronym for gunshot wound.
In the chaos that followed, Scott-Windham claimed, her companions called her mother in Mobile, tied on the tourniquet, and then transported her to the University Medical Center, where scores of other injured revelers were also being treated.
Scott-Windham stated that while she waited for the doctors, she was already counting her blessings.
“I’m just sitting there with my homemade tourniquet,” she told me. “I was simply thankful. I was blessed. I was simply grateful. I was simply like, ‘Lord, I’m just thankful I made it to the hospital, because it could have been much worse.'”
Scott-Windham’s mom isn’t a nurse. In fact, the mother and daughter work together in an Amazon warehouse.
Earlier, in an interview with NOLA.com, Scott-Windham stated that Amazon declined her request for a leave of absence despite the fact that she still has a bullet lodged in her leg and would require therapy. She expressed concern that she would need to find a new work.
“I was supposed to go, like, to work that Jan. 2, at 2 a.m.,” she told NBC News. “I said I was gonna need some time off, because I had just got shot.”
Amazon, which was struck by strikes in four states before Christmas due to worker grievances, issued a statement after receiving numerous consumer complaints demanding that Scott-Windham be given time off to recover from her injuries. The Teamsters union spearheaded a strike of 10,000 employees throughout the country — out of 1.5 million people on Amazon’s payroll — which was resolved in less than one week. According to CNN, the firm referred to the union’s engagement in the strike as a “PR play.”
“We’ve reached out to Ms. Scott-Windham to offer her our full support, including pay, as she recovers from this senseless act of violence,” Amazon spokesman Kelly Nantel told NBC News on Friday. “We wish her a full recovery and look forward to welcoming her back to work once she’s able.”
Scott-Windham said that she had heard from Amazon and would use her time off to recover. “So I’m blessed for that,” she remarked.
Tryphena Scott-Windham also expressed gratitude for her blessings.
“I nearly lost my daughter,” she explained. “I feel very sad for the other families, but my daughter was spared.”
