AURORA, Colo. -- Speaking out for the first time since a gunman opened fire at Deer Creek Middle School and shot him in his side, 14-year-old Matthew Thieu said months before it happened, he had a premonition about the shooting.

Thieu is now listed in good condition at Children's Hospital in Aurora. Speaking to reporters three days after the shooting, Thieu sat up in bed, joking and laughing, but also talking seriously about the frightening moments after the shooting. Thieu said he was standing in front of the school after the bell rang when he heard gunfire and other students began to scatter.

"I grabbed my skateboard and my book and I started running, and then I got shot," said Thieu.

Thieu said months before the incident, he had a chilling vision of a chaotic shooting scene and paramedics taking him away.

"I knew I was shot [in the dream]," he said. "I just saw bits and pieces of it."

Thieu said his dream was eerily similar to the school shooting on Feb. 23. Witnesses said a gunman walked onto the Deer Creek Middle School campus, asked a few students whether they attended the school and then fired into a crowd of children. A bullet hit Thieu in the side and another student, Regan Weber in the arm. The shooter was subdued only after math teacher David Benke and several other staff members wrestled him to the ground.

Thieu's mother Pattie praised Benke's quick thinking and said she believes there is a reason why her son was not killed.

"He's a blessing from God," she said. "I know he is on earth for a reason and that's why it was not his time to go yet."

Pattie said she does not know when her son will go back to school, but said she worries about how he will face the campus where his life changed forever.

"I'm scared for him to go back to school because of the flashback he might have," she said.

Pattie also said she is trying not to think about Bruco Eastwood, the man who has been charged in the shooting. Instead, she is focusing on her son.

"I just want to be a 100 percent with him," she said. "That's all I want."