Look Who it Was Random video

Fifth Third updates status of shooting victim recovering in hospital

41 views · Published 13 September 2018 · 0:55 · Indexed 24 September 2026

Channel: LOCAL 12 · 2018 · News & Politics

Watch on YouTube

CINCINNATI (WKRC) - Fifth Third Bank has released a statement, updating the community on the status of Whitney Austin, who was one of the survivors of Thursday's fatal shooting at the Fifth Third Center in Downtown Cincinnati.

The statement from Fifth Third Bank reads in full:

"Two days after Whitney Austin was shot 12 times, she was sitting up in her hospital room, her husband of 12 years, Waller, at her side, massaging her swollen left hand.

On Friday she was in surgery for just under seven hours to repair her right arm, which had been shot multiple times. There will be more surgery to come, as well as physical and occupational therapy, but for now she is focused on gratitude.

“I am so grateful, so incredibly grateful to be alive,” she said.

There was a moment on Thursday morning just after she walked into work through the glass revolving doors at Fifth Third Bank’s headquarters when she didn’t think she would live. She was walking as she was in the middle of a conference call, her iPhone to her ear, when she stepped into path of flying bullets. The door's rotation seized. Whitney slumped over herself clutching her laptop bag. She said she could feel blood in her throat and had an instant paralyzing fear that this was how her life would end. 

“I thought for certain I was dying,” she said. “But then I realized my left arm worked. And so did my brain. I’m alive,” Austin said.

She rolled to find her cell phone to call her husband. And that’s when she was shot again.

“He saw me move is all I could think,” she said.

She saw police officers run by and yelled for help. Then she remembers police officers, paramedics and strangers helping move her out of the doorway and on to Fountain Square. And she remembers telling them “I have a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old and they need their mommy. I need to be OK.”

She was taken to UC Medical Center.

Since then, she has FaceTimed her children and they are doing well. For now, she is thinking not of that day, but of the future. 

“I am filled with so much gratitude,” she said. “And now I need to do something with all of that gratitude.”"

More from this channel