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Shooting, Rape Victim Won't Be Haunted

ByABC News via logo
June 4, 2003, 10:08 PM

June 5 -- The brutal attack remains etched in Bridget Kelly's mind, but she won't be haunted by it.

The 24-year-old first grade teacher in Killeen, Texas, was alone in her apartment, getting ready for bed just before midnight last June when an attacker kicked down her locked door, wielding a gun.

She pleaded for her life and prayed aloud as her assailant forced her out of the apartment, into her own car at gunpoint and demanded that she drive to an ATM to withdraw $200.

Prayer and Peter Rabbit

"Immediately I began praying out loud," Kelly said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. Instinctively, she also tried to make a human connection with her attacker.

"I asked if I could help him I said 'take my money, take my car.' " Kelly said. She also told him that she was a first-grade teacher who loved teaching children and asked him if he remembered any of the stories he read when he was little.

"I even rattled off part of 'Peter Rabbit,' it was surreal, but it was in my head right then" she said. "I wanted him to see me as a human being."

Her assailant told her to shut up. He drove her to an abandoned field where he raped and shot her.

"He told me to walk away, to walk in front of him with my back to him," Kelly recalled. "He shot me once and I fell and just tried to play dead. I just wanted him to believe that I was already dead."

In her mind she told him to "please go away, please leave me here."

But he didn't leave. Instead, he stood over her motionless body and fired two more shots into her back. Her assailant left her for dead.

Finally he left Kelly to die or so he thought. Kelly's determination and remarkable will to live took over.

"God lifted me up, gave me a shove, pushed me toward those houses," Kelly said. "And that's where I found humanity again," she said.

She first crawled and then was able to get herself up and ran to a nearby house for help. After knocking on one door, her cries went unanswered. At a second house, homeowner Frank James came to her rescue.