The Cedar Falls teenager shot in the foot outside a local mall on Tuesday returned to school yesterday (Thursday), but she says her ordeal still doesn’t seem real.
Seventeen-year-old Daina Deery was walking across the street to go into College Square Mall in Cedar Falls to eat dinner with her family. “This truck comes across and he has his window rolled down and he has this gun pointing at me and he says ‘I’m going to shoot you,'” Deery says. She thought it was a joke. “We continued to walk towards the mall when he turns his car around and gets out and then shoots the gun it sounded like five times,” Deery says. The second shot hit her in the foot, and she collapsed in the parking lot.
Her brothers didn’t realize she’d been hit, and continued running toward the mall. The shooter then approached Deery.The shooter grabbed her arm and drug her toward his truck. “He just says ‘If you fight me, I’m going to kill you,'” Deery says. “I wasn’t thinking at all. I just grabbed the gun because I was like I know if I get in the car I’m not going to, there’s small chance that I’ll live, so I might as well fight for it.”
Deery says she caught the attention of a bystander and screamed at the woman. “I was like help me, help me. He’s going to kill me,” Deery says. Then, the shooter let Deery go. Deery says she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Deery is a senior in high school, and doctors say she’ll be on crutches for several weeks. Deery had never seen the shooter before. Police say the shooter, 33-year-old Michael Hruska , killed himself shortly after leaving Deery outside the mall.