Forty-two-year-old Debi Boyette says she was eating at a booth with a friend in the Crocodile Cafe when a bullet struck her in the back.
"I heard a couple of gunshots and felt one come through me," she remembered. "And everybody started screaming and running and ducking."
Boyette was one of three people caught, say Seattle police, in the middle of a gunfight last Thursday between gang members. Boyette is the owner of Le Merde, a boutique in Seattle's Phinney Ridge neighborhood.
Her 12-year-old son and his best friend, also 12, had already left where they were eating to watch the all-ages Hip-Hop show at the Crocodile when the shooting started.
The two other people who were shot suffered only minor injuries.
"So you were the most seriously hurt person?" she was asked.
"Yes, I was," she said. "The bullet came through the back of my abdomen. If I would have moved over a few inches more, then they would have gotten my spine. I just remember laying there. And all I could hear and focus on was my son crying. I was just so grateful he was OK. And I wanted to be as calm as possible."
She says the bullet took out a part of her liver and colon. She is definitely on the mend but she doesn't know when she will get out of Harborview Medical Center.
The person involved in this shooting is still on the loose.
Her friends have set up a GoFundMe account to help her pay her medical bills.
Cox Media Group
