Fayetteville mother speaks out after being shot while working at hookah lounge

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- After another shooting at Anubis Hookah Lounge turned deadly over the weekend, a former employee of the lounge is speaking out about being shot while at work back in June of this year.

Brianna Hielscher, 23, remembers the bar had just closed on June 6. when she noticed two people arguing. She said one of them pulled out a gun and started shooting. She was standing by the DJ booth at the time and had nowhere to hide.

Three people were shot -- Hielscher was one of them.

"It kind of happened just so fast," she told ABC11. "I was shot in both my legs. On my right leg, it shattered my femur."

Hielscher remembers crawling on the ground after being shot and calling for help. She said a Good Samaritan ran up to help her stop the bleeding after a couple of minutes. She remembers him reassuring her over and over that she was going to be okay. For a moment, she didn't know if she was going to make it.

"You know where your femur is, you have an artery there and I could have easily bled out. It could have been my head. I don't know, I was just, I was nervous, scared," Hielscher said.

This is not the first shooting that has happened at Anubis Hookah Lounge, and it would not be the last.

21-year-old Pfc. Jonah Taylor from Fort Liberty was shot and killed in the parking lot the month before Hielscher's shooting. This past weekend, another shooting happened outside the lounge. Two men were shot, one did not survive.

The continued string of violence prompted the lounge's owner to close the business for good. He made the announcement on social media early this week.

Hielscher said she's praying for the other victims and their loved ones, and hopes this prompts the wider community to take nightclub safety more seriously.

She said she believed the man who shot her had left the lounge, gotten a gun from his car, and come back inside before the shooting. She said she hopes security guards will watch out for behavior like that at other clubs. Hielscher also said she believes metal detectors at the front of nightclubs could help curb crime as well.

"I really, really, really want other places to take nightclubs and nightlife more seriously, because a place where I thought I was safe, I wasn't," she said.

Hielscher had to start a fundraiser to help with expenses that weren't covered by insurance. She also said the owner of the lounge has not assisted her financially at all, despite the shooting happening while she was still at work.

Though she has at least a year of physical recovery left, and she's had to quit her job and put her daughter in childcare, she's grateful to be alive.