PA Gym Shooting Anniversary Exclusive: Pregnant Victim Speaks Out
Woman was carrying unborn son when she was shot twice in an attack last August.
Aug. 4, 2010 -- One year ago today, Pennsylvania fitness instructor Mary Primis was teaching a Latin dance class when a man silently walked into the room and without warning, opened fire with two pistols.
Within seconds, 36 shots exploded into the crowded room, killing three women and wounding 9 others. Then the shooter turned the gun on himself, leaving Mary, who was 10 weeks pregnant, bleeding from two bullet wounds.
One year, and one "miraculous" birth of her baby boy later, Mary told "Good Morning America's" Juju Chang in an exclusive interview about the day she prayed for God to somehow protect her unborn child while she lay dying on the floor.
"I remember it like it all like it was yesterday," the 27-year-old said. "I was shot twice. I had one bullet go through my left arm and it hit my chest on the way out. The other bullet came into my right back and broke my scapula and turned down and broke my ribs and lodged itself in my back."
CLICK HERE to read ABC News' full report on the Pennsylvania Gym Shooting one year ago today.
Mary said she never saw the gunman and played dead after being shot.
"The first time I prayed that night, I was still on the floor of the gym and actually the first prayer I said was 'please God, please protect my baby,'" she said. "It didn't occur to me to pray to protect me as well, so the second prayer was to please help me as well."
At some point, she asked someone to call her husband, Alex.
"I think the reason Mary wanted her [a bystander] to call me was that she didn't know if she was going to live or not," Alex Primis said. "She just wanted to talk to me."
"I wanted him to know that I was OK for the moment and if I could have spoken to him that night... how much I loved him...," Mary said.
Mary and Alex had been in love since they first met. Within five months they were married. Six years later, on that horrifying night, Alex held vigil for his wife and unborn child, terrified of losing them. Both survived.
"It was pretty miraculous," he said. "We were even more taken aback that she suffered two bullet wounds and the baby and her had no major vessel damage, no internal bleeding and she had a bruised lung and the broken bones and some flesh wounds. But we couldn't be more thankful."
