Employee who helped gunshot victim in Columbia talks about incident

A day after a shooting in central Columbia leaves a man injured, a Long John Silver’s employee who jumped in to help the gunshot victim talked to ABC 17 News about the incident.

ABC 17 News reported Thursday night that CPD received a call about a gunshot victim at the Long John Silver’s on Business Loop 70. Police said the shooting happened in the 200 block of Highview Avenue, the street behind the restaurant.

Employee Tonya Stone told ABC 17 News she was working her normal night shift when everything began to unfold.

“The man came in, he walked up to the register, and then walked back to the door and fell on the ground, and his legs looked like he’d been shot,” Stone said.

She said she ran over to the man and he already had the 911 operator on the phone.

“The operator told me to take his pants off and put pressure onto his wounds,” Stone said. “I put pressure with rags on the two of his wounds that I saw that was bleeding out. I put pressure on both of them until the police got here.”

Stone said adrenaline took over and she was able to stay calm throughout the whole incident.

But she said afterward, she broke down.

I mean it was real scary,” Stone said. “Afterwards it hit me. I had never seen bullet wounds on anybody before. I’d never seen anybody be shot and I’ve lived in St. Louis, I’ve lived in Chicago, and I’ve never seen any of that before so it was really shocking to see that.”

Shocking, but Stone said she would do it all again if it meant helping someone in need.

“I had originally wanted to be a nurse so I think that my calling is to help people so I would do nothing differently,” she said.

The name of the victim has not been released and his current condition is unknown.

Police also have not released any suspect information at this time.