A teenage Seattle girl's eyeglasses might have saved her life, after they deflected a bullet shot in the midst of a drive-by outside her house on Saturday night.
16-year-old Alonza Bryant was sleeping on her living room couch around 9:40 p.m. on Saturday when a sedan rolled past her house and opened fire, according to Seattle police spokesperson Detective Mark Jamieson.
Multiple bullets pierced the walls of her Seattle home, and one struck the main window in the living room. One of the bullets hit the bridge of Bryant's glasses, which deflected what could have been a fatal situation.
"She is very, very fortunate," Jamieson told Reuters.
Bryant sustained minor injuries and received treatment at a medical facility nearby.
"I could have been dead," she told local news station KBOI. "I'm glad that the glasses saved me. I fell asleep with my glasses on, and the glasses saved where the bullet was."
A few other people were inside the home when the shooting occurred, but weren't wounded by stray bullets.
Although law enforcement officials told Reuters that the drive-by was likely a gang shooting and that someone inside the house might have been affiliated, Alonza's mother Lavette said that wasn't necessarily the case. She told KBOI that someone who visited the house in the past might have had ties, but that her family was not to blame.
"People are saying mean things on Facebook about it was gang related, we did it to ourselves, and stuff like that," she said. "That's not how it was. We are honest, upstanding citizens."
The Bryant family is currently looking for another place to live, KBOI reported. They moved out of the house shortly after the shooting.
