While it's taken months to heal, a pastor who was shot in the head while preaching on the street is talking about his experience, and God's goodness.
On November 15, 2023, Hans Schmidt was street preaching at the corner of 51st and Peoria avenue in Glendale, AZ, when someone walked up to him and shot him in the head.
"I remember falling to my knee. And then after that, I was like, 'Oh, something's not right,'" said Schmidt in an exclusive interview with ABC15. "I grabbed all my gear, put it back in the car. I drove my car back to church."
The husband and father of two miraculously stayed conscious for awhile after it happened, unaware of exactly what took place.
"He just, like, comes to the car and, like, I remember just seeing, like blood," said Schmidt's wife, Zulya. "And I'm like, 'What happened? What happened?'"
Recalling the incident, Schmidt shares that he was trying to speak to his wife but no words were coming out. That's when Zulya's brother took them to the hospital and on the way Schmidt started to have seizures.
When they got to the hospital, Schmidt was unresponsive. Doctors got him into a CT scan quickly and could see that there was a bullet in his brain.
"Even the neurosurgeon was like, nothing we can do. The detective was like, 'We'll know more after the autopsy.' And I was like, that's kind of when it became real," Zulya said. "There was no hope."
Just barely alive, Schmidt was placed on life support and put into a medically induced coma.
"Those days felt like really long," Zulya said. "I was scared that, you know, I'd never hear his voice again."
After hundreds of people praying for Schmidt, a month passed and a miracle happened. Schmidt opened his eyes and spoke.
"It's a miracle, absolutely a miracle," said Schmidt. "I should not be alive, realistically, I should be dead. And because of His grace and His love, I'm still here."
While the doctors removed what they could during an operation, Schmidt still has some bullet fragments in his skull as they were too risky to remove. Schmidt is on the mend and continues to recover with speech and occupational therapy.
The person who shot Schmidt has not been found or arrested. This hasn't stopped Schmidt from returning to the same corner and sharing the good news with people once again.
"I don't think that holding a grudge against him is going to change anything. I think it's important to forgive people. And I forgive him."