Shot 7 times, Cherokee County woman dreams of one day running again

CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. - In the winter of 2018, Tina Davis says she was 10 years into an unhappy marriage and wanted out.

"I just knew it was going to be hard to get away from him," Davis says. 

She says she and her estranged husband had been separated for a year.

"I had actually told my lawyer, 'It is going to be so bad, when he realizes I'm serious about this divorce,'" she says.

But the fitness instructor and mother of two adult sons, who had just celebrated turning 50 by running 5 half-marathons, had no idea how bad things would get, until early on the morning of February 12, 2018.

She was at home alone in Ball Ground, Georgia.

"I had just gotten up and was getting ready for work, so I was getting in the shower," Davis says.

That is when Davis heard a bang.

"I found out later, he'd shot the doorknob out," she says.  "And, when he came in, he'd cut the power, so it was dark. As soon as he came around that corner and I saw that gun, I thought, ‘You have got to be kidding me!’ I was shot 7 times with a 40-caliber pistol."

The first bullet hit her in the chest.

"It was  through and through," she says.

Two more shattered her thumb.

Tina Davis, 54, of Ball Ground, Georgia, dreams of one day running again after being shot 7 times by her former husband. (FOX 5 Atlanta)

A fourth grazed her forearm, requiring 10 staples, and a fifth bullet tore through her shoulder. Now, lying face down on the bathroom floor, she was shot again.

"It went in and hit one third of my L3 and L4 vertebrae and shattered those bones, ricocheted up through my torso and grazed my liver, my kidney, my spleen, my pancreas and hit a rib."

That bullet is still lodged in Davis' ribcage. And, he was still firing.

'One of the bullets had ricocheted and took out his right eye," she says.  "He told the police, he realized I wasn't dead, so he came over to shoot me in the head. But, with it being dark and only one eye, he missed."

The last bullet, hit the floor, ricocheted through Davis' jaw, and got stuck just under the skin below her right eye.  Davis had somehow lived through being shot seven times. But, Davis did not feel much like a survivor.

"It took me a long time to wrap my head around it, what was gone, just gone," she remembers.

The woman in love with running now couldn't move her legs.

"Even though I didn't die that day, he took my life, just as if I did.  Life as I knew it.  Life as I loved it."  

Transferred to Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Davis says, she was in a dark place.

"I was always really happy, bubbly, positive, and I had shut down," she says. 

Her spinal cord injury was considered "incomplete," meaning the cord was damaged but not severed. So, there is a chance the nerves that control the movement of her legs could one day heal.

"They do grow back, they reroute, and that kind of thing," she says. 

Still, the bullets had done enormous damage. A few weeks into her stay a Shepherd Center, Davis saw her first sign of hope.

"I looked down, and my big toe moved," she says.  "And, I was like,  ‘Oh my God!’ Because, at that point, nothing below my waist had moved."

That was a turning point. Over the next few months, she took her first steps on a walker, then graduated to a forearm crutches. More than four years in, walking is a work in progress.

"I'm just hoping eventually it will reconnect," Davis says.  "Because, if I can ever get my balance, I think I could get off those forearm crutches and, you know, possibly run again.  It won't be fast like it used to be.  But if I could run, I just want to run again."

And, Tina Davis don't count her out.  

"Because, look what I've already been through, and what I've come through, and where I'm at now," she smiles.  "I'm just going to keep pressing forward."