Payton Washington survived a shooting, then returned to win a national title

LIFE HAD NOT been easy for Payton Washington. But on Monday, April 17, 2023, everything seemed possible.

That weekend, her all-star cheerleading team was going to compete at The Cheerleading Worlds, and, as perennial contenders, they were likely to win. A few weeks later, she would graduate high school, and then officially join Baylor University's acrobatics and tumbling team, a program with seven national titles.

All she'd been working toward the past 14 years would finally be realized. She just had to get through one last week of practice.

For nearly a decade, Payton regularly made the 300-mile round trip from her home, outside of Austin, Texas, to her cheerleading gym, near Houston. She carpooled with a few of her teammates to share the burden of the drive, using a local HEB supermarket parking lot to meet and change cars, arriving back from practice late at night.

"HEB was well lit on the sides, almost like a football field, so that's why we went there," she said. "Because who would do anything bad to you at HEB?"

Monday had just turned into Tuesday when the carpool pulled into the parking lot after practice. One of Payton's teammates left to get into her own vehicle, then returned in a panic, followed by a stranger.

"I was literally on my phone, and then I just heard it," Payton said. "My ears were gone because my window shattered. That's when I turned and ducked."

But no amount of maneuvering would help. Payton had been shot.

ANGELA WASHINGTON WAS 20 weeks pregnant when she found out something was wrong. A cyst covered one of her baby's lungs, and doctors determined the baby wouldn't live through the pregnancy. They offered Angela options for termination, but she decided to carry to term.

Against the odds, Payton was born Feb. 4, 2005. But she would still need to undergo a risky procedure to remove part of her lung. The doctors gave Angela a few months with Payton before operating.

"They didn't expect her to make it through surgery, either," Angela said. "But she did."

Doctors advised Angela to get her daughter involved in activities that would improve lung capacity, so the pair joined a "Mommy & Me" gymnastics class. When Payton excelled, Angela introduced her to competitive cheerleading. It wasn't long before she was out-performing peers at her local Austin gym, prompting Angela to find a team in Houston that equaled Payton's talent. The intercity trips strengthened their mother-daughter bond.

"We were in the car three times a week driving together, so I know everything about her," Angela said. "We're extremely close."

"My dad's not in my life," Payton added, "so we were the only thing that was consistent."

When Payton was old enough to drive, she began carpooling with teammates. But Angela would still wait up until her daughter got home safely.

On April 17th, the carpool arrived at its usual parking lot meeting spot. Keyona Heubel was at the wheel, and Payton was in the front passenger seat texting her mom about Baylor applications. Heather Roth and Genesis Mitchell sat in the back.

The night was so normal that Payton didn't even look up from her phone as she said goodbye to Roth.

"And then the texts just stopped," Angela said.

Roth left the carpool and got into what she thought was her own vehicle. But there was a man in the passenger seat. "She runs back into our car and she's like, 'There's someone in my car," Payton said.

After that, things happened quickly.

"She rolls down the window and is like, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,'" Payton explained. And while she didn't see what came next, she didn't need to.

"We're in Texas," she said. "I knew what a gunshot sounded like."

Heubel tore out of the parking lot. "Kiana's driving a hundred miles an hour, past red lights, trying to get away," Payton said. "We don't know if he's following us, we don't know ... we don't know what just happened."

Roth had made a mistake. She entered the wrong car. And when she ran back to her teammates after realizing her error, the man in that vehicle followed. He fired 14 times before they could get away.

Several minutes passed before Payton noticed any pain. "It was like this pulsing sensation where it was hard to breathe," she explained. "I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know where."

The car pulled over and they called 911. Roth, who had been grazed by a bullet, was treated on the scene, while first responders readied Payton for an airlift to the hospital. She asked to contact her mom, but a teammate had already alerted Angela of the accident. As Angela raced to the hospital overwhelmed by fear and disbelief, she never doubted the strength intrinsic to her daughter since birth.

"She's mentally tougher than probably anybody you'll ever meet," Angela said. "I tell her all the time: You're just different. You're built different."

FOR ALMOST AS long as Payton had been cheering, she had also been attending training clinics with Baylor's acrobatics and tumbling team. Acrobatics and tumbling combines the various disciplines of gymnastics with competitive cheerleading. Head coach Felecia Mulkey, affectionately known as acrobatics and tumbling's matriarch, helped design the sport about 15 years ago.

"We're the only sport ever to be created for women, by women," she said. "We had the opportunity to do the right thing for the right reasons."

While acrobatics and tumbling is not yet an official NCAA sport, it does offer scholarships to its athletes, a rarity in collegiate cheerleading. And though there are now more than 50 acrobatics and tumbling teams across the NCAA, Payton's relationship with the Bears coaching staff made the program her top choice.

"She is ridiculously talented. I think that's the first thing you see if you know nothing about her," Mulkey said. "But she's an even better human."

So when Mulkey heard that Payton was in an accident, she immediately left for Austin.

Payton had been shot three times: twice in the leg, and once in the right side of her back. That bullet ruptured her spleen, and pierced holes in her diaphragm and stomach. Upon arrival at the hospital, doctors put her in an induced coma for emergency surgery. Mulkey arrived a few hours later to find Payton awake, supported by a breathing tube.

"The minute they walked in, [Payton] just had silent tears going," Angela said. "She had written -- because she couldn't talk yet -- 'I lost my dream.'"

"I wanted to do my job for them," Payton said. "The fact that I couldn't do that for them, it made it feel like it was my fault."

As the Bears took home their eighth-straight national championship the following week, they did so with "4Pay" written on their bodies. "We wanted to let her know that she was a Bear anyway," Mulkey said. "No matter what was happening, that we were home."

After a weeklong stay in the hospital, Payton faced several months of rehabilitation. The girl who used to spend half her time flipping upside down couldn't even get up off the couch. But with her mom by her side, Payton found the driving force behind her recovery. "I just wanted her to be proud of me, so I had to push through. I didn't want her to see me give up," she said. "She'd seen people give up in her life, and I didn't want to be like that."

On June 20, Payton was medically cleared for full activity. The first thing she did was return to the mat.

"You got that dog in you?" an off-camera voice asks Payton in a video shared to social media that day. She proceeds to perform a standing full -- one of the most challenging skills in tumbling -- with apparent ease.

"Did it hurt? It did," she later said. "But it wasn't going to stop me. It wasn't."

BY THE TIME Payton began freshman year at Baylor in the fall of 2023, she had regained her strength. She spent the semester improving even further for the acrobatics and tumbling season's February start. Two months before that, however, life presented her with yet another challenge: Her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.

While Payton said she was worried when she first heard the news, she realized the same inner strength that fueled her own fight would also be motivating her mother. "I was like, 'It's OK. If I can get through what I did, you can get through that,'" she said.

"I know she fought for me, too. Didn't want me to see her in pain," Angela added. "It's kind of both ways. We do it for each other."

Together, the Washingtons took on the acrobatics and tumbling season -- Payton on the mat, and Angela in the stands.

In Payton's first home meet, against No. 2 Oregon, she scored a then-personal-best 9.95 in the six-element tumbling pass, with her mom watching on. The performance earned her National Collegiate Acrobatics & Tumbling Association (NCATA) Freshman of the Week.

"Oregon was almost like another little comeback in its way," Payton said. "I was like, I have to show everyone who's coming that I made it, and I'm here for a reason."

Payton continued to contribute to Baylor's success that season. The team was undefeated entering the NCATA national championship, and ultimately secured yet another appearance in the tournament's final round.

As the Bears prepared for their last day of team competition, Payton joined her teammates in the tradition of writing motivational messages on themselves. In response to last year's "4Pay" tributes, she signed her name on others and inked "R V N G T O U R" on herself.

"Revenge Tour," she said of the letters marked on her knuckles. "I'm getting my revenge. It's my turn. It's my time."

One year and 10 days after getting shot, Payton helped Baylor win its ninth consecutive national title. She was named an NCATA All-American and Division I Freshman of the Year.

Minutes after stepping off the mat, she reflected on the significance of the victory.

"Today, I got to rewrite my story and write my name on them as something that's powerful," she said, "not something that's sad."

SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE AND witness accounts helped police identify the man who shot Payton. Pedro Tello-Rodriguez, 26, was taken into custody a few hours after the incident, and later released on bond. On Aug, 6, 2024, a Bastrop County, Texas, grand jury indicted Tello-Rodriguez on two felony counts, including deadly conduct. His first hearing is set for Nov. 6.

In the four days before Payton's incident, two other teens -- each in different parts of the country -- were also shot. Ralph Yarl of Missouri continues to recover from a traumatic brain injury. Kaylin Gillis of New York was pronounced dead at the scene.

"I thought, 'How do you prevent it, if there's a way?'" Angela said. "But there's nothing Payton could have done any differently. She did nothing wrong."

News of the three shootings made national headlines, unexpectedly thrusting an 18-year-old Texan into one of the country's most divisive debates.

"At first, I was trying to take that backseat approach. I didn't really know where I stood," she said of gun control in America. "This just happened to me. Why should I be the person to talk?"

This summer, the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention -- established just five months after Payton had been shot -- invited her to Washington. She met with other gun violence survivors for the first time, finding a community understanding of all that had gone unspoken about her experience.

She also learned about the office's plans and shared what she believes should be one of its priorities: educating young adults.

"At my age, people are just walking around with [guns] like it's an accessory," she said. "Something needs to change with that, because the longer that goes, the worse it's going to get, and the more people my age are going to die."

Firearm injuries remain the leading cause of death among people aged 1-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Sept. 26, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced plans to combat this issue, introducing measures that aim to improve school-based active shooter drills and reduce threats developing across the illegal firearm marketplace. Payton joined others from the gun violence prevention community on stage as President Biden signed the executive order.

"There was a lot of trauma and a lot of passion in that room," she said. "This is definitely a step in the right direction to make people feel more safe, and that they can go day to day feeling happy, and not live in fear."

Payton, now 19, still endures moments of anxiety as a result of her experience. But exposure to broader efforts against gun violence has helped give her a new perspective.

"I want to do anything I can to help," she said. "I just didn't know that that was needed of me."