‘It was like a zombie movie’: Perth woman shot in the face as post-uni holiday goes horribly wrong

THE gunshot melted her gums and blew out her teeth, but Amy Matthews literally had no idea what had just hit her.

IT melted her gums and blew out her teeth, but Amy Matthews literally had no idea what had just hit her.

The 21-year-old Perth woman was celebrating the end of university with a holiday in the US in June last year, when she found herself in the middle of a gang shooting in New Orleans’ famous Bourbon Street party district.

“I heard the first shot … it’s not something you hear usually like it’s a sound you’d never hear, so my brain was struggling to figure out what it was in the beginning,” Ms Matthews told Channel Seven’s Sunday Night program.

“And then I heard it again and then people started running and screaming.

“I felt heat, a lot of heat in my cheek and I spat blood and teeth into my hand.”

Ms Matthews had been shot in the face, the bullet entering her cheek and coming out through her top lip, taking with it 13 of her teeth and shredding her tongue. She was mere millimetres from suffering brain damage.

Shooting victim Ms Matthews is helped in the street by Will McDaniel, in the high-vis vest.

Unaware that she had been shot. she sought help from a security staffer at the Krazy Korner bar when she had been with a friend.

The man, US Marine Will McDaniel, described the scene as “almost kind of like a zombie movie”.

“Her hands were completely covered in blood. Blood up to almost her eyes,” Gunnery Sergeant McDaniel said of Ms Matthews, who sat on the footbath outside the bar, nursing her injury.

“She just ended up in my arms and I just pulled her off down a side street.”

Ms Matthews has made an incredible recovery back in Australia, crediting McDaniel and another good Samaritan, military doctor Josh Whatman, who also stopped to help.

“I just feel lucky that I came out of something that you wouldn’t expect people to come out of that kind of thing so I’m just happy that I’m unluckily lucky — that’s how I see it,” she told the program.

“I don’t go a day without thinking about them.”

A woman was killed and nine others were injured in the Bourbon Street attack, which was reportedly drug related.

Ms Matthews lost 13 teeth and her tongue was shredded.