Durban - A good Samaritan’s brave efforts to assist a man who had just been shot earned her a bullet through her own arm at the weekend.
But speaking from her Glenwood home on Sunday, 22-year-old Stephanie Meyer said she had no regrets.
When asked why she had decided to step in, the mother-of-one simply said: “How could I have not?”
Meyer, who works at Ninth Avenue Bistro in Morningside, had just come off her shift when she and a friend heard a noise down the street.
They could see a man lying on the tarmac, bleeding and the pair immediately sprang into action.
Meyer’s friend, Tahne Bush, 19, ran to the man’s side and Meyer got into her car and followed.
“I didn’t realise the shooter was still in the area, but as I was driving, a car pulled up in front of me, forcing me to stop,” Meyer said.
A man got out of the car, walked up to the passenger side window and fired a shot at Meyer.
“It went straight through my arm,” she said.
She tried to grab the gear stick but could not lift her arm, so she opened her door and “fell out”.
“He fired about four more rounds, but I managed to crawl under the car and get up and run,” she said.
She reached paramedics who had arrived by then and collapsed.
Life Response 24/7 spokesman, Leon Fourie, said the two victims had been treated at the scene and were taken to hospital.
Meyer said she had not realised how immediate the danger was, but said she was glad she had been there.
“If I wasn’t, they might have shot Tahne,” she said,
“And I don’ know if help would have come as quickly for the gentleman who was shot.”
That man was 36-year-old Virgil Kennedy, whose friend, Errol Langlois, 37, had been dropping him at home when they were hijacked.
Langlois said he had pulled over in Clarence Road to answer a phone call and the next thing he knew, two men were upon him and Kennedy.
“The person on my side told me to get out and my first thoughts were that they were policemen,” Langlois recalled.
But when the man pointed a gun at him, he quickly realised he was being hijacked.
“I got out the vehicle, gave him the keys and told him to take everything and let us go,” Langlois said.
But then Kennedy got out and after a brief exchange of words, one of the hijackers shot him in the head.
Of the women who had come to their aid, Langlois said they had shown “so much courage”.
“It was unbelievable,” he said, “I’m so thankful.”
Both Meyer and Kennedy were recovering on Sunday.
Meyer had been discharged from hospital and Langlois said Kennedy’s face was badly injured, but that it looked like he would be okay.
Daily News