(CNN) The most seriously injured of two teenage cheerleaders shot in a Texas parking lot this week — an incident in which one said she opened the wrong car door — is recovering from surgery as her team to compete in a world championship without him. , an official of his cheer company said.
Payton Washington was shot in the leg and back during the early Tuesday attack in the city of Elgin, which damaged his pancreas and diaphragm and required him to undergo surgery to remove his ruptured spleen, Lynne Shearer, managing partner of Woodlands Elite cheer program, said. CNN on Wednesday.
Washington’s cheer team is scheduled to perform in a championship competition this weekend in Orlando, Florida, and Shearer said the high school senior will not be able to compete.
“The realization of the fact that he’s not going to compete this weekend — it’s starting,” Shearer told CNN.
Washington, according to his team, was one of two teenagers who police said were shot early Tuesday in the parking lot of an HEB supermarket in Elgin.
Another teenager — Washington’s cheer teammate Heather Roth — said she got out of a friend’s car in the parking lot and opened the driver’s side door of a car she thought was hers, but found He hit a stranger sitting in the passenger seat, according to CNN affiliate KTRK.
As he tried to apologize to the man, he got out of the car and started shooting, Roth said at a prayer vigil Tuesday night, according to the affiliate.
Roth was also shot, and was treated and released at the scene, Shearer said. The other two cheerleaders who were there were not reported injured.
Washington was stable in an intensive care unit on Tuesday, according to a GoFundMe page set up by his team, the Woodlands Elite Generals. Shearer said Wednesday that Washington’s stomach has not been closed because doctors have given him heavy antibiotics and are waiting to make sure he doesn’t get an infection.
Police used witness accounts and surveillance footage to find the suspect in the shooting, 25-year-old Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., according to a police affidavit.
A supermarket manager witnessed the incident, and police have surveillance footage from the parking lot that shows the license plate of the suspect’s car, police said, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., was arrested on Tuesday morning and charged with deadly conduct with a firearm.
Rodriguez was arrested early Tuesday on suspicion of aggravated assault with a firearm, a third-degree felony, according to a probable cause document. He is being held on a $500,000 bond. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.
The incident is at least the third time in recent days that youths have been shot while apparently in the wrong place, including a 16-year-old who was hit in the head after ringing the doorbell. in Kansas City, and a 20-year-old man was allegedly killed by a homeowner whose driveway he accidentally walked into.
The Texas shooting shocked the cheer team just days before they were scheduled to compete in the Allstar World Championship in Orlando this week.
Roth is expected to compete, but Washington will have to come to terms with the fact that he won’t be with the team, Shearer said.
“So (Washington) is very, you know, up and down with his emotions. But he talks and for the most part does well,” Shearer said.
Payton Washington was shot in the leg and back, requiring her to undergo surgery, an official with her cheer program told CNN.
‘I have no doubt he will pull it off’
Washington, a high school senior, “overcame many obstacles to rise to the top of his game,” Shearer said, including being born with only one lung.
He committed to the Acrobatics and Tumbling team at Baylor University. The university’s head coach, Felecia Mulkey, told CNN that she visited Washington on Tuesday and that Washington is making good progress, thinking his road to recovery is just beginning.
“Payton is a strong young woman; if you know her, you know that about her,” Mulkey said. “I have no doubt he will get it done.”
In this undated photo provided by Baylor University, Payton Washington poses wearing Baylor University attire.
Mulkey described Washington as an “amazing athlete but an even better person.”
Roth, who is in college, and Washington are from the Austin and Round Rock area and travel in a carpool to a cheerleading gym in the Houston suburb of Oak Ridge North three times a week.
Washington made the approximately 300-mile round trip in eight years, Shearer said.
CNN’s Raja Razek, Chris Boyette, Alisha Ebrahimji, Tina Burnside and Joe Sutton contributed to this report.
