LAKEWOOD, Colo. -- A man shot less than two weeks ago in a Lakewood Walmart parking lot is telling Denver7 his version of what happened that night.
"I thought I was going to die. I mean, four shots into you," Luis Acosta recounted.
The other three shots hit him in the stomach.
“They had to take two organs out of me. I had a collapsed lung, a lacerated liver, and they took some of my colon out,” the man said.
Acosta and his fiancée, Alyssa Matz, were in a Lakewood Walmart parking lot on August 23 finishing some late night shopping. As they were backing out, Acosta says a car going very fast nearly hit them.
“At that point, I got out of the vehicle and told him, 'You need to slow down, he needs to move over.'”
Lakewood Police say that driver of that vehicle was 21-year-old Kile Chaca. According to the arrest affidavit, the two got into an argument.
“By that point, I realized I was talking to an individual who wasn’t in their right state of mind,” Acosta said.
As he started to back up, Acosta said Chaca fired five shots. The victim says he immediately thought of his daughter.
“When he shot me, she was the only thing that was running through my mind. Really, her memory, her memory was the only thing that kept me awake," Acosta said.
He says he never lost consciousness as he laid in that parking lot bleeding out.
Matz was next to Acosta the entire time. She remembers that night well saying, “I was just praying to God and screaming and praying at the top of my lungs that he wouldn’t take him from us."
Acosta and Matz said they are grateful to the first responders and good Samaritans who rushed to help.
“There was people taking paper towels out of their car they just bought,” Matz told Denver7.
Acosta spent eight days in the hospital. He said doctors wanted him to stay longer but he had to get back to his family. With dad, mom and baby back together, the couple feels like they have a fresh start.
“Life is starting to get back to normal. I’m not going to let some little kid change my life because he decided to make a bad move,” Acosta said.
Chaka was arrested a few days after the shooting for assault with a deadly weapon. In the affidavit, Chaka claims it was self-defense but also said he never saw Acosta with a weapon.
