Woman shot by airsoft guns while jogging

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - The woman was running down Ellison Avenue in the Germantown neighborhood when a group of teenagers waited for her and shot her several times with airsoft guns.

And she might not have been the only victim.

Abi Peck loves to run. She would run down Ellison three or four times a week.

But now since sun dips behind the horizon quicker this time of year and things like this happening, she’s rethinking it.

“Never had any problems during daylight hours, but as soon as it got dark, people took a little more liberties,” Peck said.

Those liberties involve ambushing unsuspecting runners.

“I was coming across this bridge and I saw a group of kids and they kind of looked over at me and ran off into those trees and opened fire on me with some airsoft guns,” she said. “When I saw them they kind of looked back at me and immediately darted off the sidewalk. For a second I was like, ‘maybe they’re being nice and getting out of my way,’ but they were just really getting behind cover to shoot me up.”

She took on the barrage of BBs and kept running.

She didn’t get any in the face or the eyes, but had some welts up her arm.

“That was just unexpected and unpleasant,” Peck said.

She went home and posted what happened on Facebook.

Someone replied that they saw the same kids running after a car, yelling at it to stop, while shooting at it.

“Hopefully what comes of this is that somebody maybe knows those kids and will tell them to act right so they don’t mess with the wrong person who might not just keep running,” Peck said.

A recent study by Adidas found that 92% of women are concerned for their safety when they go for a run.

51% of them fear being physically attacked, and over a third of women have been physically or verbally harassed.

Peck says she loves running too much to stop.

But now she’s going to think twice about running alone, especially at night.

“I’m going to join up with some other ladies and start running in groups to make it a little bit safer. Hopefully make it less of an easy target by being in a bigger group,” she said.

Peck carries pepper spray on her runs, but she felt this instance didn’t call for it.

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