Associated Press
ROANOKE, Va. — The husband of the surviving victim in the on-air attack of two journalists in Virginia says his wife was shot in the back.
Vicki Gardner’s husband, Tim Gardner, spoke to ABC News on Friday morning, two days after the shooting in Moneta, Virginia. Tim Gardner says the gunman fired at his wife after shooting WDBJ-TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward. Tim Gardner says the gunman missed his wife twice, and she then dove to the ground, curled up in a ball, and was shot in the back.
He says that after the attack, Vicki Gardner got up and walked to the ambulance after being shot, and she didn’t know the extent of her injuries at that point.
He adds: “But the surgeon told me that a couple of centimeters and she wouldn’t be walking, and a couple of centimeters more and she wouldn’t be alive.”
When the survivor of the on-air TV shooting awoke from surgery Thursday, her first communication with her family was concern for the families of the two slain journalists.
That’s according to Vicki Gardner’s boss, Troy Keaton. He said Friday that Gardner expressed condolences to the families of WDBJ-TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward.
They were killed by a former employee of the station Wednesday as they interviewed Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Chamber Chairman Troy Keaton says Gardner continues to improve.
Gardner lost a kidney and part off her colon from being shot in the back by Vester Flanagan. Flanagan later took his own life.