Recovery Mode

In the summer of 2023, massage therapist SHELLEY LANCASTER was in peak mental and physical condition.

She told her sister SHANNON BROWN, a nurse, that she felt as if she were preparing for something.

Lancaster was on a juicing diet, practiced yoga six days a week, frequently worked out at a gym, and meditated and walked her border collie, Maddie, after work.

She didn’t know it then, but she was preparing her mind and body for the ordeal of a lifetime. That trial began August 17 when a gunman shot her six times as she walked Maddie along Lake Avenue in Wilmington.

“I was one driveway away from where I live, and I felt the presence of this car,” Lancaster recalls. She wondered why the car stopped and turned to see if the driver needed directions.

“When I looked, I was looking down the barrel of a gun, and he just started shooting,” she says.

The first bullet went through her right elbow, shattering the head of her humerus and exploding into fragments that lacerated her kidneys and liver.

Lancaster saw that Maddie, who was tethered to her, wasn’t hit but had blood on her from bullet wounds to Lancaster’s left knee and ankle. As she turned to escape, bullets hit Lancaster in her lower back and sacrum, taking her to the pavement.

In all, ten shots were fired before the shooter drove away, some after Lancaster was down.

Lying in the empty street steps from home and clutching her phone, Lancaster texted neighbors and called her parents. She told them she was shot and didn’t think she would survive.

Neighbors called 911 and rushed to help. One man ran out of his house with a shotgun. JOHN GORI used his military training to apply tourniquets.

Police investigating reports of gunshots nearby arrived quickly. Lancaster described the shooter and car. That information helped police identify a suspect in her shooting and another assault the next day in Wrightsville Beach. William Gilmore, thirty-five, was killed August 18 in a shootout with law enforcement on Market Street in Wilmington.

Lancaster was shot at 6:35 p.m. Ten minutes later, paramedics arrived to take her to Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center, where staffers were amazed to see her vital signs were normal. She says doctors attributed that to her practice of meditation.

Lancaster was rushed into emergency surgery to repair damage from multiple bullet wounds.

The next day, an orthopedic surgeon showed Lancaster X-rays of her shattered elbow with bullet fragments scattered around it. Bones above and below the joint were aligned perfectly for healing, and no repair was needed. Instead, an external device was surgically attached to her arm to stabilize it during healing.

Somehow, one of the bullets missed major arteries and lodged in her pelvis, where it remains because the risk of removal is too great.

“The physical therapist at the hospital told me, ‘You are a testament to what the body is capable of when you really care for your body,’” Lancaster says.

She left the hospital after six days. For two months, she recuperated at the Brunswick County home of her sister SHENNA LONG. Sisters SHANNON BROWN and SHERRY SKUMANICK assisted.

“My recovery, I think, is the result of many things coming together,” Lancaster says. “This community is amazing.”

By community, Lancaster say she means Wilmington and the BeUnlimited studio where she practices yoga.

A benefit auction organized by BeUnlimited owner MAGGIE BELLAMY and held at The Eagle’s Dare raised thousands of dollars to help with medical and other expenses. Community members donated auction items and services.

“I believe in God, I believe that we have angels, and I believe in prayer,” Lancaster says.

She thanked the community for prayers, financial support, gifts, and expressions of concern. “All of that is just uplifting for someone who is healing,” Lancaster says.

As she recovers, Lancaster, now fifty-four, also checks off accomplishments. So far this year, she hiked a 9-mile-long trail in Arizona rated as difficult, resumed multiple classes at BeUnlimited yoga, and returned to work, serving more than twenty clients a week.

“There were times I did not want to get off the sofa,” Lancaster says about her return to yoga. “But I would get up and I would come, and by the end of the class I had done something I didn’t think I could do, and I felt better than before I came.”

Maddie, who was traumatized by the attack and became very protective of Lancaster, has mostly recovered after a month with EMMA NANCE, owner/operator at Dragon Dog Training.

Together, Lancaster and Maddie again walk in their neighborhood, surrounded by the healing love of friends and strangers alike.

To view more of photographer Terah Hoobler’s work, go to terahhoobler.com.

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