Pregnant teller: Gunman stopped co-workers from helping her

May 5, CNN

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (AP) -- A pregnant bank teller who lost the twins she was carrying after being shot during a holdup choked back tears Saturday as she recalled lying on the bank's floor, bleeding and pleading for help, as the gunman demanded money from her co-workers.

Katherin Shuffield, 30, said the masked gunman jumped over her teller station and shot her once in the abdomen April 22 just after the Huntington Bank branch had opened for the day.

As she lay bleeding on the floor, she said the gunman, who remains at large, refused to let her co-workers call 911 to get her medical assistance.

"I said, 'Please help me! He shot me, he shot me! My babies!' He didn't let anybody do anything because he was more worried about taking the money," Shuffield said during a news conference at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.

Two days after the shooting, Shuffield, who was five months pregnant, lost her twin girls. She remains hospitalized with an infection created by the bullet that passed through her abdomen.

Her husband, Jason, pushed her in a wheelchair Saturday to a media room where she spent 20 minutes recounting her ordeal and the heartbreak of losing their twins after a pregnancy that had recently become easier after a difficult first three months.

Katherin Shuffield said that she started working at the bank branch in March 2007 and that since then it had been robbed three times, including the April 22 holdup.

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photo: Katherin Shuffield was five months pregnant with twins before being shot in Indianapolis, Indiana (AP)