GRANT, Mich. — A West Michigan woman is sharing her story after being shot several times as she lay sleeping in a back bedroom.
Brandi Martin was enjoying the end of a Sunday evening back on March 29, 2021, watching some TV with a longtime friend named Tim.
The pair drifted off to sleep for a while, and then just after midnight, they wake up to the sound of breaking glass and gunfire.
“I heard the first shot, and felt it go through my foot,” Martin told FOX 17 Tuesday afternoon.
“I had absolutely no idea what was happening... It mostly felt like chaos.”
As someone familiar with shooting guns, she knew what she heard before losing consciousness.
"A couple went through the wall, went through the bathroom and shattered the mirror," she explained.
"But I took five of them."
Five shots made their way into her body at different points, leaving her with substantial internal damage.
At the hospital, she spent about two weeks in a coma while her mother and older sister waited for her to come to.
"Titanium is a great material, but it's very cold and very painful," she said.
She now has two steel plates at different spots in her arm, and a steel rod that goes from her knee to her hip.
There is also about an inch and a half of bone missing from a spot in her arm.
"I tell myself that it was a very specific incident and he's in prison and I don't need to worry about it, but my brain doesn't necessarily agree," she said Tuesday.
Betsy considers herself to have a high tolerance for physical pain, but it's the emotional impact of what happened that has been the hardest to deal with.
"I owned and operated my own residential remodeling for 25 years or more," she explained.
"It's the independence that I lost; that has been the most challenging. ... I'm not able to go back to work for a number of reasons, obviously ... physically, I can't do the same things I used to do."
Police arrested Levi Daniel Hubler for the shooting. He was charged and later convicted of assault with intent to murder.
Hubler was sentenced to 15 to 50 years behind bars.
Betsy says she knew Hubler before he shot her but not very well.
"Last time I saw or heard from him was the very beginning of January," she said.
That was when she sold him a trailer, which she says went well at the time.
"I got a text from him a couple hours after I saw him that said I'm 'truly an angel on Earth' and blah, blah, and all these nice things about me," she explained.
"Then nobody saw or heard from him, you know, over the next three months."
Betsy's family has started a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money for her recovery, and to cover the substantial medical bills she has already had to rack up.
