Nearly three months after taking a bullet to the chest during a mass shooting at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, Tyson Foods lobbyist Matt Mika is opening up about the attack that targeted Republican lawmakers and injured five people.
Speaking with Good Morning America, Mika said he recently returned to the field where gunfire rang out the morning of June 14. He recounted the moment he first saw the shooter, James Hodgkinson, 66, moments before the Illinois man began spraying the field with a semi-automatic rifle.
“We all yelled ‘Gun!,'” Mika remembered. “I don’t know who yelled it first and we started running.”
House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, of Louisiana, was critically injured during the shooting, and is now learning to walk again. The 51-year-old congressman had to undergo several surgeries and blood transfusions in the shooting’s immediate aftermath. He was shot once in the left hip.
Hodgkinson died after being shot by Scalise’s security detail.
Thank you Matt Mika for sharing your story – glad to see you're doing well. Can't wait to see you on the ball field again! pic.twitter.com/opy7LPZX7z
— Rep. Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) September 4, 2017
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Mika told Good Morning America he does not recall when he was struck with the first bullet, which left a hole in his chest. He believes it occurred as he was running towards the parking lot. That is when he spotted the 10-year-old son of Congressman Joe Barton, and guided the child to safety inside a dugout.
Mika then continued towards the parking lot, he said. As he reached the gate to the lot, he saw that he “had blood all over my chest, on my pants.” Mika was still running; bullets continued to fly by overhead and to the side of his head.
Mika ducked behind an SUV and put his arms up to cover his head when he was hit again, he said.
The second bullet struck his arm, Mika said. Had his arms not been raised at that moment, Mika believes he would have been struck in the head, neck or face.
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“I wouldn’t be here right now,” Mika told Good Morning America, adding he is still going through physical therapy.
“Time stopped,” Mika said. “I think it is awesome I’m alive. The incident took six minutes, according to the police reports. It felt like 30, 40, 45 minutes.”
Mika said he was on the ground when Crystal Griner, a U.S. Capitol police officer assigned to protect Scalise, fell on top of him. Griner had been shot in the ankle. Griner then got up and reengaged the lone gunman
“This is supposed to be a safe haven, this is the sandlot…you’re not supposed to have any violence or guns or shooting,” Mika said. “So, we have to be better than that.”