George Davis Jr. — one of more than a dozen people struck by gunfire in the shooting outside Buford’s bar earlier this month — is trying to contact three strangers who tended to his wounds and drove him to the hospital that night.
“I need to thank them,” he said in an interview with KUT’s Austin Signal. “Even though they weren’t thinking of doing something like that that night, they decided to act. And because of that, I believe I’m alive today.”
The shooting happened just before 2 a.m. on March 1. A man stopped in front of Buford’s in a black SUV, turned his hazard lights on and began shooting people outside the bar with a semi-automatic hand gun. Three people were killed, and more than a dozen others were injured.
Davis said he was waiting for an Uber ride in the middle of West Sixth Street when he heard the shots ring out. He instinctively ran toward North Lamar Boulevard.
For a moment, Davis said he thought he was in the clear. But while he fled west, the shooter parked his car nearby and began carrying out his rampage on foot with an AR-15-style rifle. Davis was shot in the back below his left shoulder in a parking lot.
Photo courtesy of George Davis Jr.
The bullet wound that George Davis Jr. received during the West Sixth Street shooting.
Davis said he was “surprisingly focused” as he called 911.
“They didn’t want me to move,” he said. “But after a couple minutes, I realized I was by myself and not really next to the Buford’s bar where every police officer and ambulance was,” he said. “[I needed] to get somewhere where I can be seen.”
Davis ran until he made it to North Lamar near REI Co-op and BookPeople. He tried flagging down people who were driving by in hopes someone would take him to the hospital, but no one stopped.
“No blame to them,” he said. “They were trying to get out of a crazy scene.”
Davis said he felt his lungs fill up with liquid. He was coughing up blood. Then, a woman who was walking nearby came to his aid.
“She had a scared look on her face,” he said. “Obviously, I’m covered in blood, kind of panicked on the phone, and I just say, ‘Hey, I’ve been shot. Do you have any kind of cloth? Do you have any shirts?’”
Davis said the woman applied pressure to his bullet wound with a T-shirt and spoke to the 911 operators for him. Then, Davis saw a man who was also fleeing the shooting and called out to him for help.
“I asked him, ‘Hey, do you have a car? Do you have a friend … that could help me and get me to the hospital?’ He texted somebody or called somebody [and a] car pulled up right on North Lamar,” Davis said.
The driver told Davis and the woman who was helping him to get in. The woman continued applying pressure on Davis’ back until they arrived at the hospital.
“I’m sure the backseat of that car is ruined. That’s part of the reason why I empathize with them, because some people may think in the middle of that situation: ‘No, not my car,’” he said. “It takes a courageous human being, someone brave to not just get out, but actually bring others or help others to get out with them.”
Davis had surgery the morning after the shooting and was discharged the following Tuesday. Since then, he’s been sharing his story online, trying to get in contact with the three strangers who helped him. Amid the chaos, he never got their names.
“Up until now, I haven’t heard anything, but I’m still hopeful that we can connect. And they may not want to for certain reasons, and I totally understand that,” he said. “But I’m going to make the effort.”