Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I'm Either Going To Take A Round Or That Bomb Is Gonna Go Off

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

Gwen is a librarian and Lloyd is a Sheriff’s deputy, both are among the 18 hostages held captive by an armed assailant with a dead man’s switch in a Salt Lake City library. Rose discovers she is with child shortly before an intense storm leads to an industrial accident at sea, mangling her legs and endangering her pregnancy. After ending her abusive marriage, Kelly finds herself in even more danger when her ex-husband stalks and eventually shoots her. Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Rosetta Stone: Don’t put off learning that language - there’s no better time than RIGHT NOW to get started! For a very limited time, I Survived listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s Lifetime Membership for 50% off! Visit rosettastone.com/survived  

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. He shouted that he had a gun, and that he had a bomb, and that he was going to take hostages. And he told everybody not to move. Real people. When the machine came on, by the time I thought jump, I could already feel like my ankles cracking.

Who faced death. I'm looking down the barrel of the weapon, knowing the chances are I'm either going to take a round or that bomb's going to go off or both. And lived to tell how. I said to him, you know, it's really not too late. And if you'll just call 911, I will never tell anyone what happened here.

This is I Survived. It's March 1994. Gwen is a librarian at the Salt Lake City Library. She goes to the second floor to watch a ceremony for a visiting artist. I walked across the floor and I saw that they actually had finished the ceremony and turned around to leave when a man jumped up on the reference desk and started shouting that he had a gun and that he had a bomb and that he was going to take hostages.

And he told everybody not to move. I was about four feet in front of him, and he pointed the gun at me and said, you, go in to the room. The gunman indicated a conference room nearby. I turned, started walking to the room. I said a prayer. Why?

You know, it was one of those prayers, a why prayer. The answer came. It was a very distinct voice. The answer came, you are needed there. Next door to the library was the sheriff's office, where Lloyd was working. I was the training lieutenant for the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office.

The day that I was working there, I was dressed in casual clothing. It was on a Saturday. It was normally my day off. A young man came in yelling, is anyone here? And I went out to see what the problem was, and he told me there was a hostage situation going on across the courtyard in the Salt Lake City Library.

Nine people were being held hostage. Armed with a concealed gun, Lloyd ran to the library. As I approached on the second floor, I observed a gentleman who told me to get out of there now. There was a man with a gun in the other room. I told him I was with the sheriff's office. He also had a letter in a manila envelope, and he said he gave me this to mail. The letter was from the gunman to the media and the police. Lloyd took the letter and asked the man to take him to the hostage room.

My purpose for going in the room was to be an insurance policy. I had a weapon on me, and if I were to take that envelope in there and get him to think or distract him for just a moment, then I might have an opportunity to take some action. As I approached, I came in on an angle so that I could see him gradually. I saw him sitting behind a table. He had the gun in his hand and the bomb on the table. He saw me and turned the gun at me.

I'm looking down the barrel of the weapon, knowing the chances are I'm either going to take a round or that bomb's going to go off or both. My purpose for going in the room was to be an insurance policy. I had a weapon on me. I knew that if things really went bad, that I had the training to take some action. He had the gun in his hand and the bomb on the table.

He saw me and turned the gun in his hand and the bomb on the table. He saw me and turned the gun at me. So as I waved the envelope at him, I said, what did you want me to do with this? And he said, I want it mailed. Lloyd gave the letter back to the original messenger waiting outside the room. He then returned to face the gunman in the hostage room. I raised my hand and said, look, I

don't know what's going on here, but you're scaring the hell out of me with that gun. What do you want me to do? He pointed over in the corner and said, go over there and sit down. No one in the room knew Lloyd was an armed police officer. I thought the fact that he came in the room and joined us was a little odd, but the whole situation was very odd.

He had a gun in his right hand, and he had a item that looked like a bomb using a curling device as a dead man switch. They used the curling iron because as long as the iron was open, it had a gap in there. When you let go, the spring-load the curling iron because as long as the iron was open, it had a gap in there. When you let go, the spring-loaded curling iron automatically closes and the wires touch. My first option there was to try and take him out. That would have been inappropriate at the time because if he let go of that dead man switch,

then it would ignite the bomb and seriously injure or kill everyone. The gunman ordered Gwen to pull the blinds and tie the doors shut. After the doors were tied shut and he had us all settled and seated down, he told me to go around and take everyone's jacket. The man who had come in last, he looked at me and he just kind of shook his head a little bit.

I just gave him a little bit of a nod and walked on by and took everybody else's jackets but his. I turned my body, the weapon side, further away from the hostage taker and was able to pull my shirt tail out and cover the weapon. After my weapon was covered, I dropped the jacket. As we pulled into the table, and he had a moment or two, he passed out copies of the hostage demand letter. Apparently he had

served time in the military. The gunman was demanding cash, gold bullion, and military service back pay. He wanted a pardon for his actions and a hearing for other grievances. When I read the letter and some of the off-the-wall comments that he'd made in there, and there were several that concerned me, one of which is that he would release remaining hostages. That told me that he planned on killing someone. It was obvious that he had bias against anybody but whites. Women's liberation and nicotine gum and abortions and so forth, things that didn't make sense. So to me, it became obvious after reading the letter

that this person is emotionally unstable. That's when I knew that this thing is not going to end the way I want it to. The negotiator's not going to be able to talk him down and bring him out. He is going to kill. He would point guns at people. He would talk about someone dying or not leaving the room.

Plainclothes police officer Lloyd hoped to disarm the gunman. When he put the gun down, that seemed for a second to be my golden opportunity. However, if I misread that and he let go of the dead man switch, the bomb went off. Now I have basically injured or killed everyone in that room. The police special weapons and tactics team had surrounded the room. He asked me to go and check and see who was out there. I saw a police officer.

Their head showed up over the edge of the escalator. When I told him, he got angry. So the next time that he asked me to do it again, I lied. I just told him there wasn't anybody out there, though I could see there was people in a couple of different areas. The hostages had been held for nearly five hours. One of the hostages was a diabetic. She had only planned on being at the library for a couple of hours for her meeting

and did not have her insulin with her. So he threatened that if she had any problems, she'd probably be the first one to be killed. As her situation started to deteriorate, I said, Mr. Draper, why don't we just let her go? She's just going to lay there and die. She's not going to do you any good. His comment was a little bit chilling there. He said, maybe I'll trade her for a cop.

I've always wanted to kill a cop. Sue was digressing because of the lack of insulin. I'll trade her for a cop. I've always wanted to kill a cop. Sue was digressing because of the lack of insulin. And she was laid on the table. And at one point, she woke up. And she looked over frantically in my direction. And I wanted to calm her. So I leaned forward, put my hand on her shoulder,

and said, don't worry. Everything will be OK. When that happened, my shirt came up, and the gentleman sitting on the end of the table saw my weapon. He looked at me and said, pull your shirt down. I assume at that point, he figured I must be a cop. He periodically, with his dead man switch, would play with it.

He added a couple of pieces of tape because I guess in holding it, one of the wires had come loose. So he taped it back. Lloyd was worried Draper would drop the switch and detonate the bomb. He saw me looking at that, and he got kind of mad at me. He said something to this effect, Mr. Prescott, you're making me nervous.

The longer the situation went, the more angry, the more volatile he became. A police negotiator has been talking to Draper by phone. After the negotiator called the third time, he was obviously more upset. And he yelled and screamed at the negotiator and basically told him, don't call back. He said, we're going to draw straws to see who is going to be killed. And I knew I wasn't going to let him execute someone

while I sat in the room with a gun. And he told the library lady to get the cord. Gwen had used the cord to tie the door shut. I stood up and very slowly started walking toward him. And I said to him, I says, I don't, I gave the rope and the knife back to you. I don't know where they're at. He's got the gun and the bomb up on the table.

And he glanced down like this to see where the knife back to you. I don't know where they're at. He's got the gun and the bomb up on the table, and he glanced down like this to see where the knife was. And it was down on the floor next to him. And when he looked down, that was my window of opportunity. So at that point, I had to stand and spin, and I yelled, Sheriff's Office, hit the floor. I yelled that as loud as I could because it was just incumbent that everybody get below the plane of that table in case that bomb went off.

He looked up at me and then moved the gun on me, and I was looking down the barrel of that.45 caliber semi-auto. I shot several times and hit him in the chest. I literally knocked him off of the chair. Things became very chaotic at that point. several times and hit him in the chest. I literally knocked him off of the chair. Things became very chaotic at that point. That was the time where I didn't know why the bomb hadn't gone off.

About two feet away from my head, there is Draper laying on the floor. He's reaching toward his gun, and Lloyd tells him not to move or he's dead. Draper said, I'm a dead man already. Clifford Draper was arrested but died on the way to the hospital. None of the hostages were injured and Sue, the diabetic, recovered. Lloyd discovered why the bomb hadn't exploded.

When he finally had to repair the dead man switch, unknowingly, he put too much duct tape on and made it too thick for it to close and the wires to make contact. Lloyd's my hero. I am ever so grateful that he chose to join us. I think that had he not been there, at least one of us would have been shot. I think the reasons that I survived is because I was lucky and I did the right things tactically. And I think if you do the right things, it will pay off for you. And that's what I did.

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How did these artists take paint from a palette, arrange it on a canvas? I began to unlock the secrets. I was a storehouse of knowledge of how to create an illusion, present it to an experienced expert, manipulate his mind, and convince him and bring him to the inevitable conclusion that the painting is genuine. We flooded the market with my paintings, and I couldn't believe what I did. I couldn't believe it. Then the dominoes started falling, and eventually the FBI were led to my door.

They uncovered a mountain of evidence against me. But they never actually got you. At this point, you've sold a lot. You've got like a million dollars in cash. You've sold one painting for $717,000. Why did it go away? Why did you never get indicted? How are we having this conversation?

I guess that's the greatest story of all. To hear how Ken Pereni made millions in art forgery, dodged the mafia and the FBI, subscribe to The Jordan Harbinger Show and check out episode 282 in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. In October 2005, Rose was a quality control officer on a fish processing vessel on the Bering Sea. The ship was between the coasts of Russia and Alaska.

That day I had woke up and for a couple of days, I had thought, you know, that I just felt a little nauseous. So about 9 o'clock in the morning I got up and took the pregnancy test and it came up positive. Rose's boyfriend Alex also worked on the boat. He said, you know, well, we'll talk about it when we get back on land and decide what we're going to do. So from there we just went to work. It had 50-foot waves that day and very high winds. They said it was like the worst storm of the whole season, just happened to hit on that day.

When I had come on shift, they had decided that there was too much bacteria in the number three line. So they wanted us to do a full cleanup. The supervisor walked by and said that, you know, everything's shut down, there's no power, go ahead and start. I'd cleaned the factory probably a thousand times, the same piece of equipment. Rose had to climb inside a machine called a hopper to clean it. The hopper is about three feet wide, and it goes straight down for about three feet. And then at the bottom, it comes together like a funnel.

It has two screws at the very bottom that feed the meat out of the machine. That's one of the reasons that it was so hard to stand in there because, you know, it's stainless steel, it's slippery, and, you know, it's like a funnel, so you're always standing on the screws no matter what. The screws were about three feet long and six inches apart. When the power was off, the screws could not turn. When you're in the factory at all times, you have to

wear rubber boots. I was inside the hopper cleaning it because there was meat stuck under the screws. The waves were hitting the boat, and they were there was meat stuck under the screws. The waves were hitting the boat, and they were hitting it so hard that the water was coming through the porthole openings. And it was rocking really bad. The person who was running the machine lost his balance and fell into the control panel. And the machine turned on, which caused the screws

to grab my legs and feed, and the machine turned on, which caused the screws to grab my legs and feed them through the machine. The screws started turning and took my legs out from under me and fed them backwards. By the time I thought jump, I could already feel like my ankles cracking. In that three to five seconds, it had gotten my feet and fed my legs all the way through, almost up to my kneecaps in just that little bit of time. I remember screaming the most highest pitched scream I ever heard in my life and, you know, yelling for help.

The machine was switched off after a few seconds. The supervisor came running over and he's like, what the heck is going on here? And then he looked and he saw me and he was like, holy. And they started getting torches and plasma cutters and things like that to remove me from the machine. Rose's boyfriend, Alex, rushed to her side. I remember asking Alex, you know, if the baby was going to be okay. And he was like, you know, it's going to be okay. Everything's going to be all right. I remember, you know, it was like feeling this immense pain for the first, I don't know, maybe 60 seconds. And then everything just kind of stopped.

Like I didn't, it didn't hurt anymore. And I got really calm because I kept thinking, you know, if I keep screaming like this, it's not going to do me any good. I'm going to bleed to death or, you know, I'm going to go into shock or something like that. About that point, when I calmed down, the engineer came over and he was a pretty religious guy. He sat into the bowl and he had his legs hanging over the edge into where I was.

And he started praying with me. And he just told me that everything was going to be OK, and he let me put my head on his lap. Rose was rapidly losing blood. They had to actually remove the whole front of the machine to get my legs out of it because there was no other way to do it. They had two cutters, two plasma cutters, and one person was on each side cutting away the machine

to try and get it off of me. Plasma cutter is sort of like a welder's torch. They're really intensely hot. My legs and my rain gear and everything were resting on that metal. So as they were heating the metal, it was just heating everything up in there, kind of like an oven.

There were waves breaking over the front of the ship, the bow of the ship, because the waves were 50 foot tall. I kept thinking, you know, like the perfect storm movie. I was in the machine for 2 and 1 half hours before they were able to get me out. I remember looking back and where my feet should have been, toes pointed down, the toes are pointed up and one's going sideways. And I was just like, oh my God. Rose had multiple broken bones and torn muscle from her feet to her knees. Her massive blood

loss meant an IV drip was essential to replace fluids. The medical officer on the boat didn't know how to give IVs. She wasn't trained to do that. Rose's friend Ruby had been a nurse and was asked to help. Ruby was trying, but she couldn't get the vein. I grabbed the rubber thing, and I pulled it really tight and made a fist. And I'm like, OK, Ruby, just do it.

And she was like, well, I don't want to hurt you. And I was like, you know, just do it because it's not going to hurt any more than anything else that happened today. She was like, okay, and she did it. And then she finally got the IV in. Rose had lost 50% of her blood, putting her life and her pregnancy at risk.

Alex was in there with me, and he was being pretty quiet. And, you know, he wasn't really saying much, just telling me that he loved me. The ship was about 160 miles off the coast of Alaska. The captain and the first mate had come down numerous times to talk to me to let me know what was going on. They had come down once and said that the Coast Guard was on their way and that they'd be there in a couple of hours. But then they had come down later and said,

you know, the storm's too bad. The chopper can't make it. It's too rough. I was pretty scared by this point. But I kept thinking, you know, I don't want to fall asleep, because what if I don't wake up? I knew the first time I had seen my legs the way that they were twisted around the screws and, you know, feet gone backwards and stuff. I knew, I knew it was bad.

Terrible weather delayed the rescue helicopter from Alaska. From the time that the accident happened and the time the chopper came, it was about 17 and 1 half hours that I was stuck on the boat. When they came to lift me off the boat, Alex wanted to go with me. But they said that the weather was too bad and that they could only take me. They hooked me up to the hoist. And I remember I was going up.

When I got close to the chopper, the board started to spin a little bit from the wind. I kept going underneath the chopper leg. And I'm like, oh, great. Not only are my legs broken, but now I'm going to get my face smashed by this leg on the helicopter. And I was maybe two inches from hitting it. And the guy that was inside the helicopter spun me really quick

and pulled me in. By the time I was inside the helicopter spun me really quick and pulled me in. By the time I actually reached the hospital, it had been 20 hours since my accident. Rose has lost two thirds of her blood supply. Her pregnancy and her life were in danger. Once I got to the emergency room and the doctor talked to me, then that's when I started to kind of panic. It's been a really long time since your accident, he said. In most of these cases, the critical time to save a limb

is two to three hours, he said. And you've been out there 20 hours. And he said, you know, you're showing a lot of rigor mortis and decay. I can fix the bones. You know, we can put screws and do everything possible to fix it.

He said, but if I can't, I need you to sign this paper so we can amputate. And I remember I started crying. And I remember telling him that I didn't want to lose my legs. We'll save as much as we can, he said, but if it comes between a choice of you dying or saving your legs, he said, you know, we're going to save your life. And then I remember signing the paper, and then they put me to sleep.

She awakens, not knowing if her legs have been amputated. I woke up, and I remember I was trying to, like, wiggle my toes. It felt like I was wiggling my toes. It felt like I was moving my ankles. And I'm thinking, you know, my eyes are still closed, and I'm thinking, well, you know, they must have saved them. And then I remember looking down, and, you know, once they got past my knees, there was nothing there, and I was just like, oh, my God.

Rose's boyfriend, Alex, phoned from the ship. He's like, you know, I'll be there soon. And I was like, well, you know, Alex, they cut my legs off. You know, I was like, I'm not sure if you want to come. He told me, he's like, it doesn't matter because I love you for who you are, not for your legs. He's like, and I'm going to come anyway. When he finally got there, I remember he walked into the room

and the first thing he did was come over and give me a kiss and a hug. And he climbed in the bed beside me and just held me because I was crying. The doctor told Rose that despite the accident, she was still pregnant. But there was only a 5% chance the baby would survive. They tested me for every possible birth defect they could check for, and they did blood tests all the time. And I had like six ultrasounds. Every time everything came back normal,

and when I went into labor, he came out, and he's just perfect. On both of my legs, they had to be removed pretty much right below my knees. They wanted to make sure that they kept my knees there, because it's a lot easier to be mobile on prosthetics. If you look at life like just the bad stuff, then you're going to be miserable your whole life.

You just have to kind of, OK, yeah, this happened to me, and it really sucks, and it's horrible. But you have to move on with your life and just keep going forward. Rose and Alex have since had another baby. I think I survived because I have, you know, a lot of inner strength, and I wanted to make sure my baby was okay, and I had a lot of people around me that cared enough to help me. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Hey, I Survived listeners.

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Progressive.com to try the Name Your Price tool for yourself and join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. See what's screaming all month long during Pluto TV's April Ghouls. Watch hauntingly good movies like Evil Dead, 30 Days of Night, and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Or holy water hits like The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Plus, Pluto TV has hundreds of channels with thousands of movies and TV shows available on live and on demand. Download the Pluto TV app on all your favorite devices and start screaming, I mean streaming, now. It's September 2001 in Parrington, Michigan.

Single mom Kelly meets a new love interest named Don. I was a single mom with three kids when Don came into our lives. He was bringing me presents, saying things like, listen to this song, this can be our song. You know, the courtship rituals. And it was all quite flattering. I had been alone for a very long time. And so I did allow him to sweep me off my feet, and I married him.

Don's abusive personality came out almost immediately. We were headed out to a wedding one day, and he didn't really want to go. So he was acting very childishly. Nothing was right about me. I didn't look right. By the time we got back, I was being accused of flirting with people, showing too much skin,

behaving in inappropriate ways. He hit me for the first time that day. And I said, you know, no, I won't tolerate this. It's time for you to leave. So I packed up all his things for him, and he moved. He started stalking me. One neighbor reported that he was driving past our house 20 times a day or more. Kelly took out a personal protection order

and started divorce proceedings. The next thing that happened was Don called and asked if I would like to go on a date with him. He wanted to repair our marriage. He wanted to fix things. And you want to stay married. You don't want to fail. So I agreed to go on this date with him.

We went to the local fundraising fair that they have in that tiny community every year. And he got drunk. And because he was drunk, I refused to ride with him and decided to walk home. I got to the spot where there was no way off of this road, and here he came with his van. Don was a wrestler in high school, a champion wrestler.

He had extreme upper body strength. He dragged me by the hair and on my back to his van. He opened the door, took a step back, and swung me around, so I entered his van feet first. I crashed into the console of the van, and he ran around and jumped in the other side He took a step back and swung me around so I entered his van feet first. I crashed into the console of the van and he ran around and jumped in the other side and grabbed me by the back of my hair. He wound his hand in the back of my hair and there it stayed for about the next 10 hours.

He was talking to me and with every syllable he was crashing my head into the console of this vehicle. I can't move, and the pain is just phenomenal. So we get to my house, and he drags me out of the van. His hand was totally wrapped in my hair and ripped my clothes off me in my front yard and raped me. When he was finished, he dragged me into my house and started smashing things. The first thing he smashed was the phone. It was my only phone, and I couldn't get away from him,

and I couldn't call for help. Kelly's three children were away for the weekend. My clothes were laying in the front yard and he began dragging me back and forth by the hair through all this broken glass. At one point he took me into the bathroom and flung me in there feet first. I was so afraid in the bathroom. He kept smashing my head on the tub, on the floor. I just kept saying to him, you're so handsome.

You're so strong. It's a survival technique to absolutely agree 100% with everything that's coming out of his mouth. Yes, you're right, Donnie. I'm a slut. Yes, you're right, Donnie. I need to be punished.

At one point, he decided that I had stolen from him and that I was still hiding his things at my house because I had been the one to pack him up. As a tactic, I said to him, you know, maybe they're in the basement, thinking that he would release my hair and go down to the basement to look for them. He did not release me. What he did was drag me once more through my kitchen and through all of the broken glass that was there and to the basement stairs. A year before, Kelly injured her back, leaving her with permanent nerve damage. The pain of that bouncing down the steps on my damaged back

was so intense that literally I couldn't see. And he dragged me to my feet at the bottom of the steps. And this intense pain caused me to vomit. And I seriously tried so hard to make sure that none of that vomit landed on him. But he had my head, and I really didn't have much control. Some of the vomit landed on his boot, and that sent him into total madness.

He picked up a handful of the vomit and smeared it in my face and really was careful about making sure that it got into my eyes, into my nose, into my respiratory system. Eventually, as the alcohol started to wear off, he sat down on the couch and, still by the hair, forced me to sit between his knees.

But I knew that he'd fallen asleep when I felt his grip loosen on the back of my head. Kelly crawled away and hid under a bed. I could no longer run away. I couldn't move. I couldn't cry. I couldn't call out for help. I was done. That was it.

That was the end of human endurance. It was all I had. Sometime during the afternoon, I heard him get up. And I heard him rummaging around in my house. And I heard him calling my name and he said that he loved me and he said that he would see me later. After he left, I was traumatized. I didn't even think of calling the police. I only thought of cleaning up the mess so that no one would ever know. Five days later, a friend persuaded Kelly to go to the police.

She was taken to the hospital. It was too late to do a rape kit. However, the doctor on duty wouldn't even examine me. He said that I was lying because my bruises were the wrong color. The police interviewed Dawn, who told them Kelly had fallen off his motorcycle. They believed him. They believed him. Some months later, Kelly still had a protection order against Dawn. All of a sudden, I hear a voice. Where are you going?

And it was Don. The kids were gone for the weekend. And I knew that my life was in danger. I turned around, put my back to him, and something hit me in the back of the head, and I fell to my hands and knees. And he said to me, I'll bet you're surprised I did that. Without looking at him, I said to him, why'll bet you're surprised I did that. Without looking at him,

I said to him, why would I be surprised for you to hit me? And he said, I didn't hit you. I shot you. And I put my hand up to the back of my head and pulled it away. And it was just covered with blood. And so I turned around to look at him. Without warning, Dawn shot Kelly again. I never heard the gun, but I watched the bullet come out of the end of the gun and watched it spiraling towards me, and it hit me right between the eyes. Kelly instantly lost sight and hearing on her left side.

He came over to me and forced me to my knees and put this gun to the back of my head. And I thought, you know what? This man may be able to choose the time of my death and the place of my death, but I refuse to allow him to choose the manner of my death. So I wrenched myself out of his grip, and I turned around, and I faced him.

He brought the gun up and started pulling the trigger in kind of a Russian roulette kind of a way. Click, click, click. The bullet never came. There were no more bullets in the gun. He came with two bullets. I believe that his intention was one for me and one for him. Dawn dragged Kelly through the house, beating her.

Up and down the hallway, into the kitchen, into the bathroom. There was blood on the bathroom ceiling. There was, my bedroom was absolutely saturated with blood. He threw Kelly on the floor and sat on her chest. Once again in survival mode. You're so strong, you're so strong, you're so handsome, no one else could control me the way you do, telling him the things that I thought he wanted

to hear. And it worked. I calmed him down. And so I said to him, you know, it's really not too late. If you'll just call 911, I will never tell anyone what happened here. He went and got the phone, and he dialed 911, and he hung up on them.

He laid the phone down right next to me on the floor, and he said to me, no, I'm not going to call 911. I'm going to, I'm just going to sit here until you die. Then the phone rang. And I had no idea who it was. But some voice inside me told me that I should hit the phone and just start screaming. And that's what I did. The caller was from the 911 emergency service.

However, what it did for Don was drive him right back into insanity. He choked me, and it went so quickly, I could feel it. I just turned my face to Jesus and just lost consciousness. Don went home, reloaded his gun, drove to a friend's place and shot himself. The police and the ambulance came for me. And then the police and ambulance came for him. They put us together on the same airlift and took us in a helicopter to a hospital. I overheard a man and a woman speaking.

And the woman was saying, is this smart, having them here together? And the man said, he's dead. He won't be hurting anyone ever again. I just remember feeling cool hands ministering to me. And I knew right then that I was going to be OK. cool hands ministering to me. And I knew right then that I was going to be okay. At the hospital, doctors said the odds on Kelly surviving were one in six million.

What they told me was that when I got to them, that there was not enough blood left to justify human life, that the bullets, when they had hit me, had hit me at full velocity. Kelly has memory problems, constant pain, and acute anxiety. I survived where so many others don't so that I could bring the power of this story and this experience to women who need inspiration

to survive domestic violence of their own. Thank you for listening to I Survived.