A Texas high school cheerleader says she tries not to think about the man who allegedly shot her after a teammate mistakenly entered his car in a supermarket parking lot.
“He did what he did, and I’m just going to try and get through it, there’s no point in me, really, trying to think about what he did,” Payton Washington, 18, told ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday.
“I’m just trying to do whatever I can to be normal and do everything a senior in high school would do,” Washington said.
Washington suffered three gunshot wounds and teammate Heather Roth was grazed by a bullet in the shooting.
Stony Point High School cheerleader Payton Washington was shot by Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr. after one of her friends mistook their car for his. Washington claims she tries not to think about Rodriguez Jr. while speaking on ABC’s Good Morning America on June 2, 2023. (Instagram/@we_payton)
Washington said she did not realize immediately she was wounded, then saw blood on the car seat and felt pain in her abdomen as the cheerleaders fled in their vehicle.
ELEMENTARY STUDENTS HOSPITALIZED AFTER MISTAKENLY CONSUMING CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE
Washington said she was shot twice in the hip and once in the back, with the wound damaging her stomach and causing the removal of her spleen and part of her pancreas.
The shooting occurred days after two high-profile shootings that occurred after victims went to mistaken addresses. In one case, a Black teen was shot and wounded after going to the wrong Kansas City, Missouri, home to pick up his younger brothers. In the other, a woman looking for a friend’s house in upstate New York was shot and killed after the car she was riding in mistakenly went to the wrong address.