MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) — Alexis Scott-Windham rang in the New Year in New Orleans with seven other friends from Mobile, Alabama. The Blount High School graduate says they were about to call it a night when Shamsud-Din Jabbar barreled down Bourbon Street in a truck.
“We heard something go, boom, boom, boom. And people were screaming. And I looked to the left, and a truck was coming down the street, and he was halfway on the sidewalk too. He was just running people over like it was nothing,” said Alexis.
The 23-year-old says the truck the terrorist was driving hit her and knocked her to the ground. At first, Alexis thought he ran over her foot, but as she tried to get up and run away she saw blood pouring out. Her best friend Facetimed with her mother, Tryphena Scott-Windham, who directed them to make a tourniquet with Alexis’ sock to slow the bleeding.
“It was like turning on a switch. It’s my baby. I got to make sure she can, my baby can come home safe,” said Tryphena.
Alexis says Good Samaritans offered to take her and her friend to the hospital. As she got up, that’s when Alexis saw the horror of what happened.
“To my left and my right, two dead people,” said Alexis. “And as I looked down the street, it was just bodies everywhere.”
She says her friend Brandon Whitsett, a Vigor High School graduate, was also injured and is still in the hospital in New Orleans.
“It’s like the truck hit one whole side of him,” said Alexis.
She says two of her other friends were also hurt but not seriously.
“How can you do this to people? How could you do this? I couldn’t wrap my mind, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I’m sorry. I just think he was mentally ill,” said Tryphena.
The bullet is still lodged in Alexis’ foot, and in two weeks, she says she’ll follow up with a doctor to see if the bullet will need to be surgically removed.
“I’m just thankful. It could have been worse, like when people was coming to the hospital, they were looking for their family members, and they were dead. So they was just telling them, like, sorry for your loss, and they would just bust out crying. So, I couldn’t do nothing, but thank God that I only got shot in my foot,” said Alexis.
