An Oregon woman who was in town competing in a fencing tournament remains hospitalized after being hit by a stray bullet while riding back to her hotel room.
Jamie Hicks Willemse was headed back to the Omni Hotel on Aug. 28 when gunfire erupted in downtown Atlanta. Willemse, who had just won third place in USA Fencing’s Veteran National Championships, was struck in the back while riding in a Lyft with another fencer, according to an Atlanta police report.
She and a teammate had been celebrating her third-place victory in the age 50-59 women’s saber event, which was held at the Georgia World Congress Center late last month.
Willemse was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital for surgery and nearly died after the stray bullet pierced her spleen, stomach and diaphragm, according to an online fundraiser. She also suffered a broken rib and a collapsed lung. She is expected to survive, but remains hospitalized two weeks after the shooting.
Willemse faces a long recovery, according the fundraiser set up by the fencer’s friends and teammates to get her home to Portland.
“Due to the lung injury she is not allowed to fly, so getting her home will be an expensive and difficult process,” her teammates wrote on the GoFundMe page. “The family will be facing large medical bills and other associated expenses, including medical transport, nursing services and long-term physical therapy.”
As of Saturday, the page had raised nearly nearly $21,000 to get Willemse back to the Pacific Northwest.
Atlanta police have released surveillance video of two men wanted in the shooting, but it wasn’t immediately clear Saturday if the suspects had been identified.
Credit: Atlanta Police Department
Credit: Atlanta Police Department
An officer was called to the intersection of Baker Street and Ted Turner Drive shortly before 11 p.m. and found the woman slumped over in the back of the ride-share vehicle. The driver told police he was waiting at a red light when gunfire erupted outside a nearby liquor store.
According to the police report, the shooting began when a man standing outside the bottle shop approached a dark-colored sedan at the intersection. Surveillance footage showed someone in the car attempted to “snatch something” from the man, prompting two people to pull out guns and begin firing as the sedan sped away.
“The female victim was not involved, just in the wrong place,” Atlanta police spokesman Officer Steve Avery said previously.
According to police, the stray bullet entered the Lyft driver’s car through the back bumper and continued through the trunk and into the back of Willemse’s seat. Investigators collected nine 9 mm shell casings from outside the liquor store.
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