A good Samaritan’s act of kindness and brave efforts to assist a man who had just been shot, earned her a bullet through her own arm over the weekend.
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?”
Stephanie Meyer was shot in the arm after she and a friend had stopped to help a man who had been shot in the face during a hijacking in Morningside on Friday night.
Meyer, a waitress, looked into the eyes of the gunman after she drove into the path of their escape in a stolen car. The bullet broke her arm.
The young Glenwood mother believes she was targeted because the hijackers probably thought she had witnessed the hijacking. She said she initially felt a “shock” when the bullet hit her. “I was filled with adrenaline and don’t know how I managed to crawl to my friend. The man fired two or three more times, but I managed to get away,” she said.
Meyer explained she had finished her shift at a restaurant in Morningside and had had drinks with a fellow waitress and friend, Tahne Bush, around midnight. The pair were about to leave their place of work and were waiting in the parking lot for Bush’s lift to arrive.
“Tahne suddenly heard a commotion and ran in the direction it was coming from. Since I was was ready to go home, I jumped into my car and decided to drive to see what was happening.”
As I came around the corner, I saw Tahne attending to a man who was bleeding. I noticed a car on the road but didn’t think anything of it and was about to stop and park but the car on the road cut me off, I had no idea at the time that the occupants were hijackers who had hijacked and shot the man who was lying on the side of the road, – she said.
Reliving the moment, Meyer said she remembers a man climbing out the passenger side of the vehicle that had cut her off and walking towards her.
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“About four meters away from my car, he pulled out a gun. I was shocked and thought I was going to die at that moment. Then he shot me, the bullet went through my arm and broke the bone. I couldn’t drive off because I couldn’t use my arm. I just stared at the blood pouring down my arm. I managed to open my car door and crawled over to where my friend was. I was calm and just told her: Tahne, I’ve just been shot,” she said.
The rest of the night’s events remain a blur for Meyer who lost a lot of blood and was rushed to hospital.
“I was told if the bullet had not gone through my arm, it would have gone into my chest,” she said, grateful to have survived the ordeal. “It’s a clean break, my arm is literally in two pieces, so I have no use of my arm. This is terrible because I am a waitress and cannot get back to work to earn a living for at least two months while it heals.”
“Obviously the paramedics in the ambulance attended to my wound and they stopped the bleeding. At the hospital I was X-rayed and they found out it was a clean break, so they put on a temporary cast and the wound was covered up and not stitched,” she said.
In pain and only given paracetamol from the hospital, Meyer said she could feel the bones moving against one another.
“I went to a private doctor today because I was in so much pain. He said that I may need plates or screws to make sure the bone heals properly, so now I will need to see an orthopaedic surgeon and have new X-rays done.
“I am not on medical aid and don’t have money for this, so I was thinking about trying to take out a loan. I don’t want to lose the use of my arm,” she said.
The Berea Mail reported that Meyer got a R5 000 bill from ambulance service Life Response 24/7.
Her mother Suzanne on Wednesday said the bill had in fact been issued by Netcare 911, who transported her husband to hospital three weeks earlier. Meyer’s father subsequently died after a long illness.
Life Response 24/7 founding owner, Denver Moodley, said the company had decided not to charge Meyer for treating and taking her to hospital.
“She was injured while in service to a member of the community and that is an ethos we share. We wish her a speedy recovery,” he said.
Various individuals have assisted Meyer during this time with some donations being sent directly to her. #HighFiveFund, a collective crowdfunding campaign kicked off this morning… to help this brave hero with her unplanned bills, please click here.
The High5 fund is a crowd-funded community driven initiative built on the concept of micro-activism.
By donating as little as R5 to a worthy cause… is within the reach of most South African’s and this simple gesture can, through the critical mass of collective good-will, make a massive difference in the lives of the recipients.
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