Denise Massey of Lexington who was in Columbia, S.C., for the University of Kentucky football game on Saturday was hit with stray bullets early Saturday morning in a drive-by shooting, leaving her in critical condition.
Massey was struck in the cheek area, according to Jimmy Brannon, a Paris attorney, who was with her.
The couple decided at the last minute to drive to South Carolina to watch UK play South Carolina and were in the city’s Vista entertainment district when violence erupted.
Four men and four women were wounded in the shootings, according to the Columbia Police Department. Police said the victims ranged from stable to critical. No arrests had been made.
“Denise Massey and I were having the time of our lives in the popular Vista neighborhood in Columbia awaiting the UK game Saturday. As we were leaving to go to the Sheraton where we were staying, I heard multiple pop, pop, pop’s.” wrote Brannon on Facebook. “Since I am a prankster, myself, I first thought some kids were busting pop bottles or the like. Denise was a couple of feet behind me talking with some people, when people started scattering and I remember joking that I was going to duck myself. When I ducked by the front of a vehicle I looked back and saw that Denise was hit. There was a very large amount of blood . . .”
“This morning doctors told me that she is very, very lucky to have a gunshot to the cheek area, shattering some bone and exiting the back of the neck without damage to the spinal cord,” Brannon wrote later.
Brannon said Massey would be in ICU “for some time but with the prayers of my friends and hers, which she desperately needs, there is hope for a full recovery.”
He wrote that her parents had been notified and that he was staying at the hospital with her for the duration. “The next 48 hours are critical they told me and Denise needs your prayers,” he wrote.
Brannon is providing frequent updates on her progress. Today he reported that doctors have told him her right carotid artery was struck and damaged but there’s no damage to the spinal chord. “She is not out of the woods, but they are cautiously optimistic.”
He said in earlier posts that officials from UK had been to the hospital, including Mitch Barnhart, UK’s athletic director.
Massey was identified as a warehouse worker at Amazon Fulfillment Center in Lexington on her Facebook page.
From Kentucky Today and staff reports.