"Thank God I'm alive": Man shot during 7-Eleven crime spree released from the hospital
LA HABRA, Calif. - One of the two survivors in the deadly 7-Eleven crime spree was released from the hospital Wednesday and on a path to recovery.
Russell Browning was shot during an armed robbery at a 7-Eleven in La Habra on July 11.
Police responded to the store near Cypress Street and Whittier Boulevard around 4:55 a.m. and located two people suffering from gunshot wounds, Browning and a store employee.
Browning was sitting in his car outside the store when he was shot.
That car now sits in front of his family home. The donuts and milk he bought for his drive to work remain in the car... along with shattered glass, blood, and other evidence from Monday’s shooting.
His wife, Georgan Browning, got a call from her husband at 5:02 a.m. saying he had been shot.
"He said I’ve been shot, and I sat up and went are you okay? And he said if I die I know where I'm going. He said don’t worry," she told FOX 11.
Doctors cleaned away all the blood, wired his jaw and stitched up his lip. Doctors say the bullet went through him.
"It didn’t get lodged, didn’t go up in the brain, it didn’t go in the face. It went through the lip and out the cheek. So everyone is telling me that is a Godsend that it happened like that,"
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Browning still has a long path to recovery. He will need new teeth and drinking and eating will be difficult while his jaw and other wounds heal.
The store clerk shot in La Habra also survived, unfortunately two others died in two separate 7-Eleven robberies.
Police say a suspect went on a crime spree targeting 7-Elevens in three different Southern California counties.
"First think I said when I knew I wasn’t dead was thank God I'm alive," Browning said.
Georgan and their son Brandon have this message for the man, police are desperate to catch.
"I’m trying really hard to have mercy for him, even though your first instinct is you want to find him and kill him yourself, to be brutally honest. But I'm trying to have mercy."
His family has set up a GoFundMe account to help in his recovery.