Woman Shot While Driving On I-25: 'I Don't Understand, But I'm Trying'
LARIMER COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4) - For the first time a woman shot in the neck as she drove along Interstate 25 talked about her ordeal. She was caught up in what appears to be a series of attacks on drivers.
There are now a total of eight similar cases in Northern Colorado. Three happened on Wednesday -- windows shattering on moving vehicles.
Last week Cori Romero was shot in the neck near Fort Collins. She's recovering but says it's been an uphill battle physically and emotionally. On Wednesday she was released from the hospital to recover at home and had to drive on I-25, which she said was difficult for her.
But Romero said she's determined to get the incident behind her.
"You know some days it hurts less than others physically, and some days I wake up and I'm angry and I don't understand, but I'm trying," Romero said.
Romero was headed home from work in Fort Collins and was turning onto I-25 when she says a dark SUV pulled up beside of her, and her window suddenly shattered.
"I thought they had actually hit my car, and so I thought I had been in an accident," she said.
She remembers feeling pain and blood on her neck but assumed it was from the broken glass, and she called 911 for help.
"I pulled over to the biggest sign that I could see just so it would be easier for them to find me, and when the police and paramedics got there, they kept saying that it was a crime scene, which threw me off."
It wasn't until paramedics started to treat her wound that she began to realize what happened was no accident.
"The pull-down mirror was down, and that's when I saw that they weren't cuts because I had initially told them I had cut my neck … there were holes on each side."
Romero had been shot and was being rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery.
"As soon as I woke up and realized she wasn't home yet is when I got the butterflies and started to worry," Romero's boyfriend Brandyn Hernandez said.
While Romero has been focused on recovering, investigators have been looking into a string of other incidents where drivers say their windows have mysteriously shattered while they were driving along I-25. They haven't linked any of them together and Romero's is the only case where a bullet was found. Still, Romero says she can't help but worry for her family and for other drivers.
"I don't think it's fair that people should have to go out and fear for their lives when, you know, they're driving to work or coming home from work or going to the school," she said.
Romero said if someone is targeting drivers, she hopes they're caught soon before someone else is hurt.
"I hope that they feel guilty or, you know, feel some sort of remorse. And even if they don't, that's going to be on you, that's not on me. I just hope that they would come forward."
The Larimer County sheriff spoke out last week asking the public to report anything suspicious.
