A Toccoa teenager who was shot last week remains hospitalized and the teen accused of shooting her remains behind bars.
17-year-old Cassidy Blalock was shot once in the arm when a gunman opened fire outside a Toccoa residence. The bullet broke her arm and severed her brachial artery. Quick thinking by a neighbor who witnessed the shooting helped save her life. “He wrapped my arm and stayed with me until the first responders got there,” Cassidy tells Now Habersham from her hospital bed in Gainesville.
The bullet traveled through her upper left arm into her chest, injuring her lung. Since being airlifted to the trauma unit at Northeast Georgia Medical Center on May 19, Cassidy has undergone two surgeries.
A mother’s worst nightmare
“It’s been rough — a mother’s worst nightmare,” says the teen’s mom Mary Adams. She says she had just returned home from dinner with her husband and their two other children when she got the call.
“Ty’s mom called me on messenger, and my hands were full, so I couldn’t answer the phone. I called her right back, and she said I needed to get over there now — Cassidy had been shot.”
Mary Adams raced to the hospital. She arrived just in time to watch the paramedics load her daughter onto a helicopter to fly her to NGMC.
“I got to kiss her and tell her I love her.”
It was a terrifying ending to an otherwise “normal day,” recalls Cassidy.
She was visiting her boyfriend, Ty, at his mother’s apartment on Ruby Street. They were eating and watching movies when she says Ty suddenly “got scared” over someone “driving weird” outside the residence. That’s when Ty, according to Cassidy, ran out of the apartment. She and his mom walked to the glass screen door to see what was happening.
“The dude that shot me got out of the car, raised a silver gun, and just started shooting at the apartment. I froze there for just a second,” recounts Cassidy, explaining, “you don’t expect somebody to pull a gun on you.”
Temporarily frozen in shock, Cassidy says, “By the time I started running, he shot, and it hit me in my arm.” She ended up on the floor wounded, covered in blood. Later, as EMTs were loading her into the ambulance, Cassidy recalls hearing someone say the gunman fired 13 to 15 rounds. Now Habersham has not been able to independently verify that. Toccoa Police Chief Jimmy Mize and the GBI, which is assisting in the investigation, have released limited information. Still, Cassidy says she heard only one gunshot — the bullet that hit her.
“After the first shot, I didn’t hear anymore.”
Despite the severity of her injuries, Cassidy was mostly concerned for her unborn child. Five months pregnant, she says her daughter was unharmed in the incident. “Right now, my biggest concern is just making sure she stays ok this whole time and that she comes out healthy.”
‘You don’t ever think it’s going to be your family’
The 19-year-old charged in the shooting was arrested that same night after being stopped by Georgia State Troopers in Lavonia. Toccoa Police charged Troy’Onta Ry’Tarious Finley, of Eastanollee, with aggravated assault. “Additional charges are anticipated,” says GBI spokesperson Natalie Ammons.
Finley, who Cassidy says she met only once in passing, is being held in the Stephens County jail. Knowing he’s behind bars gives her some peace of mind.
Cassidy may be released from the hospital later this week. Still, her aunt Christine Giraldo who is a paramedic, says, “They don’t know if she’ll have 100 percent mobility and use of her arm. It’s going to be a long recovery.”
It’s already been an intense struggle. “When I got to the ambulance, I was in such pain I just wanted to give up,” Cassidy tells Now Habersham, “but I just kept fighting.”
“She was praying in the helicopter to stay awake,” Giraldo says before adding, “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Giraldo calls the experience surreal.
“You hear about it [shootings] in the big cities. I’ve ran several shootings in my line of work, but you don’t ever think it’s going to be your family.”
Now that Cassidy is stable, the family is again looking ahead to the birth of her child. The rising Stephens County High senior was holding down a full-time summer job to prepare financially, but now, at least temporarily, she’s unable to work.
With no job benefits and only Medicaid pregnancy insurance to cover her, the young mother-to-be is warily eyeing the mounting medical bills. Her family set up a Go Fund Me account to help with expenses. Anything left over, they say, will go toward providing for her child.
Grace
Cassidy’s doctors have told her it could take a year to get full function back in her arm. It will take therapy and possibly more surgery to repair the damage fully and for her to heal.
Undeterred, the teen, described by her family as “strong” and a “fighter,” says throughout her ordeal, she’s drawn strength from those around her. She credits her survival in part to the neighbor who made a tourniquet from clothes to stop the bleeding and the EMT who kept her alert by talking with her about her baby.
Now, she’s thinking about becoming an advocate “so she can help other people who are victimized like this,” says her mom.
“I’d just like people to know it was terrifying; it was a hard thing to go through, but having support and having people there to keep me going — to keep me fighting — it kept me happy,” says Cassidy. She encourages other victims of violent crime never to give up and to keep fighting. “It eventually gets better.”
Although she still has nightmares about the shooting, Cassidy says it helps to talk about it and “not keep it bundled in.”
She’s now spending her days recuperating, planning for the future. Her employer told her she’d have a job waiting when she’s able to work again. And Cassidy intends to return to class in the fall to finish high school.
She still hasn’t picked a name for her daughter, but there’s one thing she’s sure of: “I do know the word ‘grace’ will be intertwined in there somewhere,” Cassidy says. “Now that everything has happened, it’s changed my perspective on picking a name. I want something that has meaning to it. She’s been really strong through all of this, and I think she deserves a meaningful name.”
