After dropping her son off at Pahrump Valley High School Wednesday morning and on her way to work, a local woman’s normal daily routine ended up anything but routine.
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, was driving down Blagg Road when she noticed something wasn’t right.
As she approached a bus stop that is usually filled with kids, she explained that some kids were there and some were crowding by a nearby residence.
“I noticed that at the last house on my right-hand side on the corner there was a little empty lot next to it and I noticed a bunch of children standing in the doorway of the house with their backpacks on and they looked kind of scared,” the woman said. “It looked like they didn’t want to leave where they were standing.”
The reason these children looked so fearful became obvious when the woman saw what was across the street.
“There was a big black man standing with a sawed-off shotgun looking completely erratic, looking mad,” she recalled. “It looked like he wanted to take something out on somebody.”
As she continued down Blagg Road and eventually got closer to the man, the woman’s frightful encounter began.
“I kept driving through there and then I looked at him because I was in shock because the guy had a gun, and he looked right at me and I could tell immediately that he was not happy. I don’t know why. I’ve never seen the guy before, I didn’t give him a dirty look.
“After he did that I heard a gunshot go off and I was like, what the heck,” she said.
Soon after, another gunshot rang out.
“I kept driving then. Not a few seconds after that my car got shot and my window in the back, it completely shattered,” she said. “It was the scariest sound.”
The woman began to swerve her car back and forth on the road to make it tougher for the man if he attempted to shoot at her again.
As it would turn out, the man didn’t shoot another shot, although at one point it did appear that he might, the woman explained.
“I saw the guy looking right at me in the middle of the road and I thought he was going to shoot at me again, so I took off,” she said. “I stayed on the phone with 911 and they sent deputies out.”
Afterward, the woman met with a slew of Nye County Sheriff’s Office deputies and detectives and Pahrump Fire and Rescue members.
She left her vehicle there to be examined by the police and her husband dropped her off at work at a local medical facility and she went on with her day.
The victim of the shooting had a rush of support from people she knows and some that she didn’t, in person and via social media.
“Everybody responded and was concerned, obviously, and wished me well and were glad I was alive,” she said. “I was like, me too. Everybody that I was friends with they all texted me and made sure I was OK and others supported me on Facebook.
“It was nice to know that there were people who were concerned about me and wanted to make sure I was OK.”
Now, a day after the incident, the woman is reflecting on how lucky she was, as the event really started to sink in.
“It was such a whirlwind all day long,” she said. “All my co-workers are talking to me about it, my friends are talking to me about it and it’s just crazy that something like that had happened. It was something that really didn’t hit me at heart, really. It was basically, I got shot at and I’m still here to talk about it.
“As long as I don’t dwell on it and think about the gravity of it happening, and reliving the moment it happened, because it was just not a nice feeling. As long as I don’t revisit it that way, I think I’ll be fine.”
Contact reporter Mick Akers at makers@pvtimes.com. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.