Woman Injured in Fatal Shooting of Takeoff Speaks Out for First Time

The woman who was injured during the fatal shooting of Takeoff in Houston last year has opened up about the incident.

In an interview with KHOU, 24-year-old Syndey Leday said she’s still recovering emotionally from events, during which she got shot in the head. “I have feelings of being grateful I’m still here,” she said in the tearful interview, in which she recalled the moment she woke up in the hospital. “Everybody was around me. Well, when I first woke up, I didn’t want to be there. I kept telling my mom, ‘I wanna go home.’ I had never been in a hospital like that. But I remembered what happened, because I was up the whole time after I got shot in the head and I called my mom.”

Leday explained that she felt “the sting” in the back of her head following the shooting, and clearly remembered the person she was with at the time taking her to the hospital. “It was like a scary movie,” she said. “I had blood all over me. … It was still my birthday weekend.”

The shooting occurred during the early hours of November 1, when Leday said she was out celebrating Halloween “like any other 24-year-old.” She added that she was excited about dressing up for Halloween, because it was something she hadn’t really done before.

Leday added that she didn’t think anything of Takeoff and Quavo being at the party, but towards the end of the night she realized that what she thought was friendly banter was actually more serious. “I thought it was just like, you know, some friendly banter,” she said. “Quavo, he was upset. So I noticed something was wrong. … He was finna leave. So the party wasn’t gonna keep going on, and I saw whenever… Everything broke out and I tried to run, but I didn’t go that far, so. It was really like a movie, shooting all the way until I got down the escalator into the car.”

Leday confirmed that she was running away when she got shot, and that she spent a week in the hospital after she was admitted. As a result of the shooting, she’s suffered panic attacks and struggled with her mental health. “I feel like that part was worse than the actual part of being shot in the head,” she said. Initially, she didn’t even know other people were shot. “I was sad that it ended up like that,” she said. “But I mean, we were all in the same situation. … The place that it hit in my head, I just feel like it was a miracle.”

Watch the full interview with Leday above.