Thank goodness they called his mother.
An Alabama woman who was hit by a van driven by terrorists on New Year’s Day and then shot in the foot during the attack said her friends called her mother for help as she lay bleeding on Bourbon Street.
Alexis Scott-Windham said in an interview with NBC News on Friday that her mother, Tryphena Scott-Windham, told her friends to give her a tourniquet to control her blood flow.
“Then they took the sock off my left foot,” he said. “They tied it around my ankle to cut off circulation.”
Then, Scott-Windham said, a stranger took her to a nearby hospital. “I am very grateful to him,” she said.
Tryphena Scott-Windham said she learned how to apply tourniquets “by watching television.”
“So I told my daughter’s friend to tie the other sock around her leg so she wouldn’t bleed as much,” he told NBC News. “I just blurted it out. I was in full panic mode.”
Scott-Windham’s remarkable story emerged two days after a U.S. Army veteran from Texas, who authorities said had proclaimed his support for the Islamic State terrorist group, plowed his rented truck into a crowd of revelers, killing 14 people. and injuring dozens more.
The FBI and police have said that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was inspired by ISIS to commit mass murder, but that he likely acted alone.
Scott-Windham, who is 23 and lives in Mobile with her one-year-old daughter, Skai Marie Scott, had come with a group of friends to New Orleans to party. “It was a great vibe,” he said.
As the night was coming to an end, he said, they stopped at a pizzeria for something to eat and discovered that the kitchen was already closed.
While her friends were using the pizzeria’s bathroom, Scott-Windham said, she stood on the sidewalk outside, where she heard an engine revving and then what sounded like a series of loud bangs.
Scott-Windham said she looked to her left and saw the white van heading directly toward her.
“He was running over people like they were nothing, like they were speed bumps, like he was just going to run over them,” he said.
Scott-Windham said he tried to escape, but the truck hit the back of his right foot and he fell hard.
Then, the survivor said, she heard gunshots.
“That’s when I tried to run, but I couldn’t,” he said. “I knew something was wrong with my foot. I thought it was just a broken bone or something, but it wasn’t. “My feet had started to leak.”
“I was bleeding a lot,” he said.
Scott-Windham said she, too, quickly became aware of the carnage around her. He recalled seeing one person lying face down and another with his eyes open and blood running down his face.
“When I get up, I see a dead body next to me,” he said, adding that his first thought was: “Jesus, Jesus. “Please let me get home.”
Scott-Windham said he searched for his friend Brandon Whitsett, 22, who was also injured in the attack, as he struggled to safety.
That’s when, she said, police arrived and an officer quickly looked at her injured foot and radioed for an ambulance to come get her.
“He would say, ‘We have a GSW,’” she said, using the acronym for gunshot wound.
In the chaotic moments that followed, Scott-Windham said, her friends called her mother in Mobile, tied her with the tourniquet, and then the stranger and his girlfriend took her to University Medical Center, where dozens of other injured revelers were already present. . being treated.
Scott-Windham said while waiting for the doctors she was already counting her blessings.
“I’m sitting there with my homemade tourniquet,” she said. “I was just grateful. I was blessed. I was just grateful. I thought, ‘Lord, I’m glad I made it to the hospital, Lord, because it could have been a lot worse.'”
Scott-Windham’s mother is not a nurse. In fact, mother and daughter work together in an Amazon warehouse.
Previously, in an interview with NOLA.com, Scott-Windham said Amazon had denied his request for leave even though he still has a bullet lodged in his leg and will need therapy. He said he feared he would have to find a new job.
“I was supposed to go to work that January 2nd at 2 a.m.,” he told NBC News. “I said I was going to need some time off because I had just been shot.”
Amazon, which was hit by strikes in four states before Christmas following worker complaints, issued a statement after being bombarded with customer complaints demanding that Scott-Windham be allowed time off to recover from her injuries. . The strike of 10,000 employees nationwide (out of 1.5 million people in Amazon’s workforce) was led by the Teamsters union and was resolved in less than a week. The company called the union’s participation in the strike a “public relations game,” according to CNN.
“We have reached out to Ms. Scott-Windham to offer her our full support, including payment, as she recovers from this senseless act of violence,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told NBC News on Friday. “We wish him a full recovery and look forward to welcoming him back to work once he is able.”
Scott-Windham confirmed that he has heard from Amazon and will use his time off to recover. “So I’m blessed by that,” she said.
Tryphena Scott-Windham said she feels blessed too.
“I almost lost my daughter,” he said. “I feel very sad for the other families, but my daughter was saved.”
