Dallas-based TV and radio host Rickey Smiley is opening up about the shooting his daughter survived.
The comedian told NBC 5 he knows all too well what's she's been through.
Aaryn Smiley, 19, was struck by bullets over the July 4 weekend.
“I’m so mad I don’t know what to do,” Rickey Smiley said in an Instagram video after he learned Aaryn was shot. “Trying to pack a bag. Don’t know what to pack. I can’t think straight, nerves bad, butterflies in my stomach. My daughter's in surgery."
The shooting happened on the South Freeway in Houston.
Aaryn Smiley, a student at Baylor, was celebrating her birthday when she and her boyfriend went out for Whataburger.
She was at a stoplight when police said someone in another vehicle started to shoot.
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Three men in a vehicle next to hers were shot.
Aaryn, an innocent bystander, was shot, too.
“I'm just happy to be here,” she said on her father’s radio show days later.
Rickey Smiley said they worried about Aaryn’s foot for a while because she couldn’t feel it. He said she underwent two surgeries and a blood transfusion.
She recalled what happened on the show.
“When they got out the car it didn't register they were about to shoot people. I thought like I just thought, ‘Oh these were just some dumb kids that were about to place fireworks on the ground,' because [it was] the day after Fourth of July,” Aaryn said.
“Everything she's feeling, I understand because I went through it,” Rickey Smiley said.
Smiley said he too was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he survived being shot in 1995.
“Still have buck shots right there,” he said pointing to his elbow.
As police investigate the shooting in Houston, Smiley said he and his daughter are seeking therapy to cope with the close call, and renewing calls to end to gun violence.
“It could have been anybody. She could have died, you know, we're so blessed to have her,” he said.
The four people injured in the shooting survived, but no arrests have been made.
Houston police urged anyone with information in the case to contact the HPD Major Assaults & Family Violence Division at 713-308-8800 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
