2 months after baby injured in Texas mass shooting, parents say "she's back"
Odessa, Texas – Two months after 17-month-old Anderson Davis was shot while in her car seat by a gunman who opened fire along a roadway in Odessa, Texas, she is back at day care with her twin brother. Her parents told CBS News correspondent Mireya Villarreal their daughter is "doing awesome" and explained why they aren't angry with the shooter.
The family was running errands on Aug. 31, when a 36-year-old gunman with an AR-15 style rifle opened fire, killing seven people and injuring 22 others.
"One bullet went through the back of our car … It broke into pieces, and the shrapnel hit our daughter in the face and chest," said Kelby David, Anderson's mother.
"Everything just happened so quick, and we were very confused," Anderson's father Garret Davis said. "I immediately started trying to call 911, we can't get through."
There were at least 15 different crime scenes and 911 operators were flooded with phone calls, forcing Kelby to get creative as they waited for help.
"She was bleeding and had been hit in the face," she said. "I had diapers luckily all over my floorboard, because our car is always a mess. So I just started picking up diapers."
"You were using diapers to stop the bleeding?" Villarreal asked.
"Yeah, I was just picking diapers up off the floor and just putting them all over her chest, all over her face, just trying to get the bleeding to stop," Kelby said.
"What happened when that shrapnel hit her?" Villarreal asked.
"Part of it went into her chest … you know, surgically had to remove some of that. But it hit her in the mouth, and so that was the bad part ... it went through her bottom lip and knocked out her lower right teeth and then her top left big tooth. Part of it burned all the way through her tongue," Kelby said.
After a number of successful surgeries and hospital stays, Anderson lost three of her teeth, but is now back at day care with her twin brother Rhett.
"With all the anesthesia she's had and different things, they said, 'Just give a little time and she'll start coming around,'" Garrett said. "And really, about at that six-week mark it's like somebody just flipped a switch. And one day we're sitting back there getting ready for — to take them to day care and we were like, 'This is Anderson. ... She's back.'"
"Have you guys thought about what you're going to tell her?" Villarreal asked.
"Obviously, she's the one who's had to live through a lot of the trauma," Kelby said. "I'm very seriously am just going to pray for God to give me the words."
"Think what I'm most nervous for is the questions that I can't answer," Garret said.
Anderson has years of physical healing ahead of her. But it's the uncertainty of what happened that keeps closure far from reach.
"Do you think about the shooter? Do you think, like, 'How could he, why would he?' … Do those questions run through your head? … or do you not even go there?" Villarreal asked.
"I don't blame anyone that has anger because I know everyone processes it differently," Kelby said. "I honestly don't feel anger. I feel heartbroken that a human could just end up at that point in their life."
Kelby said her daughter's smile looks different now.
"It's just even more beautiful now because we know all it's been through and all it stands for," she said. "But other than that ... she's perfect and we're thankful that she's doing awesome."
