A pregnant woman suffers gunshot wound to the face on New Years Eve
By Alyssa Munoz
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ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KOAT) — A local woman was ready to share her story of how random gunfire changed her life forever.
In 2006, Mandy Apodaca-Archuleta was six months pregnant. She was on her way to celebrate with family and friends when she heard a loud pop. Moments later, she realized blood was coming out of her mouth. She made it to the hospital, where both she and her son survived.
Apodaca-Archuleta suffered a stray bullet, likely fired as a celebratory shot for the New Year, on the side of her face.
“He [the doctor] said, you’re very lucky because you were less than a quarter of an inch from your temple. You were very close to dying,” said Apodaca-Archuleta.
Apodaca-Archuleta said she went through years of physical therapy.
“They told me that more than likely my job was not going to be open for probably close to six months to eight months. It ended up being a year that I couldn’t even get a spoon in my mouth,” she said.
She also says doctors were unable to get the bullet without causing severe nerve damage. Since then, fragments from the bullet still come out of her skin.
“I’ll chew accidentally, clamp down on it, and then I’ll break a tooth or lose a tooth and then that hole causes an infection. It causes my face to look like I’m hiding a baseball sometimes. Sometimes it’s just a golf ball,” said Apodaca-Archuleta.
She also has blood cancer now, which doctors believe the bullet in her body caused.
“You don’t know whose life you’re going to alter permanently by being drunk and having fun and thinking it’s a cool thing to do because it’s not,” said Apodaca-Archuleta. “On top of that, the chances of them finding out whose bullet that was are very slim. So that person on top of this trauma gets to live with the fact that that person could be anywhere they could be anybody.”
She said officers closed the case shortly after the incident happened, not finding the person responsible.
“It hurts me because for somebody’s negligence and stupidity, she’s having to pay and her son pays for it because he sees her sick. She’s a lot of the time,” said Bernadine Apodaca, her mother. “You guys really need to think. Guns are not the way to do it. Fireworks, there are some that come out really loud. Those you use those to celebrate. You don’t want to go around taking that life. You don’t know how dramatizing it is until one of your family members gets hit.”
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