'The View' Assistant Shot and Expected to Recover, Called a 'Hero'
Lourdes Guillen, 25, worked as an assistant for ABC's "The View" and was shot and while defending her cousin at a deli in Brooklyn, New York. Now her famous colleagues are calling her a "hero" and paying tribute to the young girl.
"This weekend, a member of our 'View' family almost paid the ultimate price for her act of heroism," said Whoopi Goldberg, one of the show's hosts.
Guillen recounted her ordeal for The New York Post. Three men, impatient with the wait to order a sandwich, picked a fight with her cousin Juan Medina before leaving and coming back with a cane and gun. The trio beat him and another cousin before shooting Medina twice.
"Put the gun down. Don't be that person," Guillen pleaded. "I knew that if my cousin got shot again, he would die," she told the Post. "I was trying to talk him out of it because if he saw I was a woman, he would stop. But clearly that didn't faze him at all."
And then he shot her.
SEE VIDEO REPORT OF "THE VIEW'S" LOURDES GUILLEN STORE SHOOTING
"I fell down against a car next to my cousin … I wasn't bleeding. It wasn't painful, just obstructing my breathing. I told my other cousin to put pressure on Juan's wound because he was bleeding," Guillen explained.
"Lourdes bravely stepped between them and pleaded with the gunman to stop the violence. He responded by shooting her in the stomach," Barbara Walters explained. "I spoke with her just a little while ago from the hospital this morning. She said she's doing well, that she's in pain. The bullet is lodged between her liver and kidney."
Medina and Guillen are both expected to recover, though physicians are less optimistic about Medina, who received two shots. If he does survive, it will be thanks to his cousin, who "held her cousin's hand and put pressure on his wounds," said Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
"I truly believe she saved both of their lives. She's a true hero," Hasselbeck added.
SEE VIDEO OF THE CONTROVERSIAL DEPARTURE OF STAR JONES FROM "THE VIEW"
