'Thought I was dead': Woman's iPhone saves her life
A woman has detailed the incredible moment her iPhone saved her life after she was shot at a party in Texas.
TikTok user Jaeli Thomas was attending the gathering in 2019 when shots were fired after a fight broke out between other partygoers.
"I got down along with everybody else at the party," she explained in a TikTok video. "When I did stand up, I took my phone out to try to call 911 and that's whenever I got hit".
Although Ms Thomas was shot in the chest, the iPhone she was holding took most of the bullet's impact leaving her with injuries far less severe.
"The bullet actually grazed one finger [when it] went through my phone through my webbing of my thumb and into my chest," she explained.
"I think I had seven stitches, it was about an inch deep."
iPhone softened the impact of the bullet
The mother of one said bullet fragments also hit her chest after hitting the iPhone. She can still feel them today.
However, she acknowledges the damage could have been much worse, adding some partygoers thought she was dead.
"The reason I say [my iPhone] saved my life is because it took most of the impact of the bullet, otherwise it would have just went straight into my chest," she said in a follow up video.
"It would have caused a lot more damage and I would have had more serious injuries.
"It took about 30 minutes for an ambulance to come," she continued.
"Some people ditched because they thought that I was dead."
Luckily for Ms Thomas, she was released from the hospital just a couple of hours later with no major injuries, although she said she still has some lasting health problems.
"I can still feel the fragments in my ribcage," she explained. "And problems with breathing sometimes, and then my hand does hurt quite a bit just because I had a lot of damage."
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The TikToker explained that the criminal case following the shooting recently closed, which is why she only just got her iPhone back and is able to share the story.
"[It] finally went to trial in August of 2021 and they ended up sentencing him [the shooter] to 45 years in prison," she said.
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