Teller Recalls Shooting That Caused Her To Lose Twins

INDIANAPOLIS -- A bank teller who lost the twins she was pregnant with after being shot during a holdup choked back tears Saturday as she recalled lying on the bank's floor, bleeding and pleading for help as the gunman demanded money from her co-workers.

It was the first time Katherin Shuffield, 30, spoke publicly about the events of April 22, when a gunman burst into the Huntington National Bank at 2030 N. Post Road, jumped a counter and shot her in the abdomen.

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"He shoved me, and it was like in slow motion going to the floor," Shuffield said. "I didn't realize that he shot me until I touched my leg and I saw that there was a little blood."

Shuffield said she was aware enough of her dire situation to ask a co-worker to hand her cell phone to her. She used it to call her husband, Jason, at his job at Lockheed Martin Corp. to tell him she'd been shot.

Shuffield, who was five months pregnant with twins, said she immediately thought of her unborn children. As she lay bleeding on the floor, she said the gunman, who remains at large, refused to let her co-workers call 911 to get her medical assistance.

"I said, 'Please help me! He shot me, he shot me! My babies!' He didn't let anybody do anything because he was more worried about taking the money," Shuffield said during a news conference at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.

Two days after the shooting, Shuffield lost her twin girls. She remains hospitalized with an infection left by the bullet that passed through her abdomen. She said that the most difficult thing to bear is the loss of the unborn twins, who were not far enough along for the gunman to be charged with murder in their deaths.

"The only thing that hurts to me is that I hear that since my babies were only five months … they couldn't do nothing else that put him in jail for a long time," Shuffield said.

Katherin Shuffield said a nurse showed her and Jason photos of their twins, and that each fetus could have fit in the palm of her hand.

"When I see the pictures with my husband we always try to be strong and don't cry. But it's hard to see that they were so little," she said, her voice cracking.

Current Indiana law allows prosecutors to charge people with murder in cases where a fetus dies, but only if the mother is at least seven months pregnant.

Because Shuffield was five months pregnant, officials can only pursue charges of feticide, which carries a lesser sentence of two to eight years in prison. The maximum prison time for murder is 65 years under state law.

Shuffield, a native of Peru, said she's upset by Indiana's laws.

"I don't understand too much about laws. But when they said that because your babies are only five months and there's nothing we can do or we cannot put someone in jail for all these long years, that hurt me," she said.

Shuffield said she started working at the bank branch on Indianapolis' east side in March 2007 and since then it had been robbed three times, including the April 22 holdup.

Both she and her husband strongly criticized the level of security at the branch, saying it was insufficient to protect the staff from the threat of violence during a robbery.

"You never get the security you deserve," she said.

The Associated Press left messages seeking comment Saturday at Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington Bancshares.

Shuffield said her mother flew in from Peru after the shooting and has been sleeping on a couch in her hospital room. Her husband has been sleeping on the floor next to her bed.

The Shuffields said the turn their lives took is almost unbearable but they are holding on.

"We're just trying to hang in there and take everything day by day," Jason Shuffield said quietly.

The couple said they are confident police will eventually catch the gunman.

Sgt. Matthew Mount of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said Saturday that several detectives are continuing to follow leads in the case.

"They're following leads and they'll keep on working until we find this guy," he said.