Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the shooting occurred on April 16.
A woman was shot multiple times at an Apple Valley gas station earlier this month, and after a week in a local hospital, she’s seeking justice for her attacker.
Brenae Smith, 21, was attacked at about 7 p.m. on April 16 at the Shell Station at Apple Valley and Yucca Loma roads.
Smith pulled into the station to grab her purse, which had fallen down while she was driving, and as she sat down to turn the car on, the first of multiple shots was fired. She first noticed the onslaught because glass from her window was spraying her in the face.
“By the time I snapped back into it, I was already being shot in the face,” she told KTLA’s Shelby Nelson.
Smith says she can still clearly picture the shooter, identified by police as Michael Bullock, 42.
“His eyes were so big,” she said, adding that they’d never met before. “He looked crazy. He looked so crazy.”
Smith, a mother of two, was shot again, this time in the back, as she got into her vehicle’s back seat.
“Something in my head said, ‘Play dead. Just play dead.’ So I just laid in the back seat, and I could feel myself choking on blood because the bullet was in my face,” she said.
She then exited the car and received aid from the owner of a nearby taco truck and firefighters.
Video recorded by stringer service OnScene TV shows a white Kia sedan parked at a gas pump with blood spatter and bloody hand prints visible on the car’s hood.
In addition, a bullet hole could be seen in the shattered driver’s window.
The shooter fled before Smith got out of the car, but he was apprehended later that evening, the Apple Valley Police Department said.
Bullock, of Apple Valley, has a lengthy criminal history, and while the motive has not yet been determined, the attack is believed to have been random.
Smith said she wants to get justice.
“I’ll go to every hearing, every court, I want him to see me,” she said. “You thought you killed me. You went down the street and said, ‘I just killed somebody.’ No you didn’t … I want him to be under the jail for the rest of his life.”
Bullock is being held at the West Valley Detention Center in lieu of $2.39 million bail, and he’s due to appear in Victorville Superior Court on Monday.
Court records show he faces charges of attempted murder, shooting into an inhabited vehicle, assault with a firearm and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Court records also list a parole violation.
Smith’s sister, Donique Mosley, has created a GoFundMe to raise money for her sister’s recovery.