Woman speaks about getting hit by bullet Uptown

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Charlotte woman who was hit by a bullet as she stood outside a club after Fourth of July festivities said she never saw it coming.

"At first, I thought it was firework," Ashlei Harvey, 24, said. "But when I did like this there was blood on my hand and I was like, 'I've been shot.'"

The bullet lodged in Harvey's shoulder and doctors were able to pull it out without surgery, but she was still shaken Friday as she spoke with Eyewitness News.

"It came out of nowhere, it came out of nowhere and just 'whoom,' it hit me," Harvey said.

Police had flooded Uptown streets with officers in anticipation of big crowds for the Fourth of July celebration and they said it was probably a bullet fired into the air several blocks or even farther away that and was on its way down when it hit Harvey.

"When you fire a gun into the air that bullet has to come down somewhere and if you're Uptown there's a good chance someone could get hit," said Capt. Mike Campagna, who leads Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department's Central Division Uptown.

It's a message that Harvey wants people to hear since it hit too close to home for her.

"People they shoot guns in the air they don't realize where those bullets go. It could've gone into my head it could've gone into my chest it could've went anywhere. So I don't think I'll go downtown for a good little minute," she said.

WSOC