PA Gym Shooting Anniversary Exclusive: Pregnant Victim Speaks Out

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."

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Alex took two months off work to be at Primis' side during recovery.

"It was hard because with all of the uncertainty around the pregnancy. After the shooting I tried not to focus so much on the pregnancy in the first trimester or two. I didn't want anything to get our hopes up too much in case something happened," he said. "Those first six months were more focused on her getting better and being comfortable."

The normally self-reliant couple learned to rely on the kindness of friends and neighbors who offered to mow the lawn and walk the dog -- small gestures that helped Alex in a big way in the pyschological aftermath of the shooting.

"For me, it was thinking at first that you can't trust anyone. You have no control over anything in life. At any minute of the day someone can take everything away from you, and that's scary," he said. "But so many people reached out to us, and showed us a different side."

After months of recovery and rehab, Mary went into labor.

"It was a really happy trip to the hospital. We weren't really in a rush. We'd gone to the hospital before when she'd been having the back pains -- I just figured it was another trip. should I grab the bag? We're just going to be back and fourth," Alex said. "He was born four hours later."

Baby Oliver weighed seven pounds and 10 ounces. Within a month, Mary was back at work -- determined to deny the gunman any more of the life she fought so hard for.

"It was a little bit emotional at first, but it's something that I love to do so I didn't want this experience to change that for me," she said. "We'll never forget. We'll never take anything for granted and I hope that if there's ever an opportunity to help someone else the way I was helped, I'll take it."