The Auburn University-trained veterinarian who was shot in the leg Saturday as a gunman sprayed bullets across a horse camp in Florida near the Alabama state line said she’s thankful she survived and no one else was wounded.

Dr. Susan Wells, 62, said she had only recently arrived at the horse camp, where many riders were already out in cotton fields doing hunting exercises with their bird dogs.

“We were unloading our horses and dogs,” said Wells, who works at Lillian Veterinary Hospital in Alabama.

She saw the gunman come out of the woods and walk across a field toward her and several other members of the horse-riding club.

“He came in, stopped, took aim at our trailers and our animals and us, and shot at us,” Wells said.

Jeannette Tracy, a professional dog trainer, had backed her trailer up in front of Wells’ horse trailer.

“She has a big rig, with a lot of dogs,” Wells said.

“She had three horses behind her trailer, four dogs on one side and about eight dogs on our side. A couple of those dogs belonged to me, so we were playing with them and feeding them. Jeannette was getting things ready on the inside.”

Wells said she and Lisa Scott were standing near the trailer when Wells noticed a man approaching.

“It’s around 3 p.m.,” she said.

“I see this man in camouflage come out of the woods on the far side of the cotton field, and he’s walking around, a straight line from there, loops around the field and comes toward us. I was thinking, ‘Goodness, somebody’s just gotten thrown (from a horse).’ He’s walking from where the horses are going to come in a little bit.”

He walked straight toward them.

“We were just watching him walk in,” Wells said.

“He got to about 20 to 30 yards from the back of the trailer and I see him pull something out of his jacket, and then, I start hearing rat-a-tat-tat. He’s shooting. I’m thinking, ‘What the heck is this guy doing out in this field shooting?’ And then I realize he’s hitting Jeannette’s trailer. The ground around Miss Scott and I starts kicking up like in a Western movie.”

It took a moment for reality to set in.

“I looked at Lisa and said, ‘He’s shooting at us! Run!’ She goes toward our horses. I just took off running. He hits me in the back of the leg. I hollered, ‘I’m hit!’ I dive under the tongue of my trailer that’s hooked to the back of my Dodge pickup truck.”

Gunshots were hitting Tracy’s trailer, Wells said.

“He’s still pursuing us,” Wells said.

“He comes in. We still don’t know where Jeannette is. She gets out of her trailer and takes off and goes the other direction out into the cotton field trying to get away as far as she can. She doesn’t know what to do. She felt these bullets come through her trailer. I’m under the tongue. I’m trying to get up. Lisa goes to the horses trying to turn them loose. One of the horses breaks free. Bullets had hit the side of my aluminum trailer and ricocheted into (the horse). He breaks free and runs loose. My other horse swings about and knocks Lisa to the ground. We truly believe that’s the only reason she didn’t get murdered. She said he (the gunman) couldn’t have been 15 yards from her. She gets up, looks him in the eye and sees him drop the empty clip and reload with another 30-bullet clip in that gun. She runs around to come find me, grabs me up and we run to Jade and Hannah Todd’s trailer. They dragged us inside. At this point, my leg’s dragging and bleeding really bad. We get inside their trailer with several other people. They locked the door. Nobody has a live weapon on them. There are bullets hitting their trailer.”

The Todd children, ages six and two, were asleep inside the horse trailer while it was being riddled with bullets.

“We found that several bullets pierced his (Todd’s) trailer,” Wells said.

“It could have come in there and killed those children. Hannah’s got a tourniquet on my leg at this point with a belt and she takes my boot off and blood is all over the floor of the trailer. The six-year-old child is horribly traumatized. She (Hannah) says, ‘Look, we got to get you out of here.’”

Wells said she was the only who had reception on her cell phone.

“I’m calling 911,” she said. “My phone is the only one that will get out. I get 911 on the phone. I told 911, ‘I’m gunshot, there’s a mass shooter, we’re in a remote area down this dirt road, Hook’s Way.’ I said, ‘Send the sheriff, send the bus, send everybody.’”

At that point, they made a run for it.

“Hannah goes outside and gets in her car,” Wells said. “We don’t know where this guy is. She goes and gets a car, puts me in the front seat, puts Lisa and the two children in the back seat, and we get out of there.”

Hannah Todd drove and planned to take her to a hospital, but they met law enforcement officers on the way.

“We don’t know how badly I’m injured,” Wells said.

“She takes me to the end of the road and here come the sheriff’s deputies. They stop and we tell them what the scene looks like. At the point we left, he was still on the grounds. The shooting had stopped when we got in the car, to the best of our knowledge, but we didn’t know how many more rounds he might have. Then the ambulance came and got me and took me in to Dothan to the emergency room.”

She was treated and released on Saturday night.

“I have a through-and-through bullet hole in the back of my calf,” Wells said.

“It came from lateral to medial. Four inches higher, it would have shattered my knee. It’s bad. It could have been horrifying. Miss Scott should be dead. I really truly don’t know how she lived through that. The bullet holes are there. She can show me where she was standing when the horse knocked her down. It’s the hand of God (that they survived).”

She said the gunman fired off at least 60 shots from a semi-automatic weapon.

“A minimum of 60, that we know of,” she said.

“He came firing with a weapon that holds 30 and we saw him put another clip in the gun. He came to unload on us. We know he emptied that before we were out of there. I don’t think there was any other reason he would have stopped shooting.”

The horse trailers were pockmarked with bullet holes.

“He was definitely aiming in our direction,” Wells said. “We were shot at, all around us, intentionally. He was sweeping and shooting the trailer. We have living quarters in these trailers. It looks like a machine gun’s gone off. There are holes in the aluminum of all her (Tracy’s) dog boxes, where all of these dogs would have been shot to death. The back of her trailer has holes in it. There were over 20 shots in her trailer that we can identify.”

The gunman was unemotional and never spoke, she said.

“He never ran,” Wells said. “He never said anything. He never hollered. We didn’t have time to say anything. By the time we realized it he was shooting at us. I just said, ‘Run!’ and took off. I wish I was a little bit faster but I’m glad I was in stride because he could have shot both my legs out from under me.”

Earnest Jett Jr., the suspect, was arrested in Alabama after being tracked across the state line. He was seen crossing U.S. 231 on foot about 4 p.m. Saturday and was arrested by the Florida Highway Patrol.

At about 3:30 p.m., the Jackson County (Fla.) sheriff’s office received a report of someone being shot near 2110 Hook Way, north of Campbellton, Fla.

Deputies and Florida highway patrol officers responded and Alabama authorities were alerted in case the suspect crossed state lines.

The suspect did not have a weapon when he was arrested, but the K-9 Tracking Unit was able to locate various items of evidence and, eventually, the weapon, the sheriff’s office said.

Jett was arrested and transported to the Houston County jail. He will await extradition back to Jackson County where he will face an open count of second-degree attempted murder and numerous other felony charges, the sheriff’s office said.

See also: Alabama veterinarian horse rider shot near Florida line: witness calls it attempted mass murder