WINNIPEG — She was shot in the chest and lived to tell the story.
16-year-old Calli Vanderaa is still in hospital recovering from her injuries but spoke exclusively to Global News Thursday.
“I want to thank the police, they were there in like three minutes,” Vanderaa said, holding onto her stuffed puppy in her hospital bed in the Intensive Care Unit at Health Sciences Centre.
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“I remember everything,” she said closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “We went to the Mac’s to get a slurpee…there were these two guys on bikes. One of the guys on the bike was yelling at my friend. He came up to the window, he lifted up his T-shirt it was like a silver gun and he held it to the window, I remember screaming at the driver to back up, everyone was screaming at the driver and he tried and he shot it and it hit me.”
She said it took a minute before she realized she had been hit.
“We were driving away, and I felt my side was warm. I told them I got shot and they didn’t believe me,” Vanderaa said.
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She said they pulled over and she layed on the pavement and her best friend Kailey held her side and spoke to 911.
Three minutes later, she says police were there.
“I remember the police were standing above me, a male cop and a woman cop,” Vanderaa said. “I asked them if I was going to die or if I was going to see my dad again, they told me I wasn’t going to die.”
Vanderaa had nearly nine hours of emergency surgery.
The bullet pierced her lungs, colon and spleen, missing her heart and spine by just centimeters.
“Extremely lucky, the bullet was two centimeters away from my heart, yeah I’m lucky,” Vanderaa said.
Vanderaa will remain in the hospital for some time and says she misses school and hanging out with her dad the most.
“All I do all day is sleep, eat ice chips and watch movies,” Vanderaa said. “It’s just boring and hot in here.”
Two men have been charged with stealing an RCMP weapon from a marked cruiser parked in a driveway in the southeast area of Winnipeg and shooting Vanderaa.
She says she’d like to talk to the guy that shot her but when asked what would she say, she jokes, “Nothing nice.”
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