Hundreds shot in Charlotte since 2012; more than 1,300 survived

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Sherae Johnson survived to tell her story.

The 18-year-old Charlotte woman is among more than 1,300 people who have been shot in Charlotte since 2012 and survived.

Investigators said Johnson was shot with "a high-powered rifle" in July, inflicting serious injury to her leg.

Not-fatal gunshot victims (since 2012)

• 2012 -- 208
• 2013 -- 254
• 2014 -- 241
• 2015 -- 293
• 2016 -- 343

The bullet traveled through her right leg, into her left, and shattered the bone.

"I thought I was going to die," Johnson said.  "I told myself, ‘I'm not going to die because I've got to get through this.’"

The 18-year-old had help.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officer Adam Jones was on duty the night Johnson was shot, heard the call for service, but wasn't dispatched to respond.

Johnson said her friends tried rushing her to the hospital themselves, but quickly realized they were running out of time.

"My friend's back seat was full of blood, like a puddle of blood," Johnson said.

One friend spotted a patrol car at a gas station nearby, and pulled in for help.

Jones was seated inside.

"They stopped beside me, I put my window down, and the front seat passenger was screaming hysterically that her friend had been shot," Jones said. "I knew time was of the essence just because of the amount of blood that she had lost already."

(Adam Jones)

Jones applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding and waited with Johnson until help arrived.  Johnson's mother, Sandra Osborne, said her daughter lost nearly 40 percent of her blood.

"I heard from the detective. He had spoken to the medical staff at the hospital," Jones said. "They said if I hadn't been there, she could've lost her life."

Doctors David Jacobs and Emily MacNeill know this reality better than most.

The two are part of the medical team at Carolinas Medical Center working to save lives for victims faced with trauma, often gun violence.

"Some days can go by where you don't see someone who's been shot, but that's not very often," MacNeill said.

MacNeill said Carolinas Medical Center consistently has resources on standby to make sure staff is ready to go the moment a gunshot wound victim comes through the emergency room doors.

Those resources include additional people, an available operating room, even blood.

"We believe that we ought to be able to save everybody who arrives on our doorstep alive," Jacobs said.  "That's not possible, but that's our goal."

Jacobs said to achieve that goal, it's become even more critical to train people in the community to stop bleeding from a gunshot wound, and buy medical staff more time to provide further treatment.

"A lot of these patients are just not getting here," he said.  "A lot of these patients, we turn on the news like everybody else, and we hear that somebody dies."

Osborne said she is grateful her daughter has a different story.

"I was so glad he was in the right place," Osborne said of Jones. "When we look at the news and each time they say the killing in Charlotte, I think about {Sherae}, you could've been in that number.”

Cox Media Group