Fayetteville, N.C. — An Army sergeant who survived six gunshot wounds in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting that killed 13 people shared his story as part of National Crime Victims' Rights Week.

Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who serves as a medic at Fort Bragg, was on a temporary detachment to Fort Hood, Texas, two years ago when the volley of shots, allegedly fired by Major Nidal Hasan, rang out, striking 44 people at the Soldier Readiness Center, where military personnel receive medical treatment before and after deployment.

Lunsford said he was just eight feet from Hasan.

"He got up and he went to the front of our building where I was checking people in, and he yelled 'Allah Akbar,' and that's when he pulled out his weapon and started discharging his weapon inside our building," Lunsford said.

The shooting left him blind in one eye.

"The first bullet went in above my left eye. It went between my brain and my skull, and exited out my left ear," he said. "I turned, took two steps and fell to the floor."

He endured months of grueling rehabilitation, but he lived to tell his story.

"Did it alter my life? Yes. But the way I look at it, by it being a life-altering traumatic experience, I turned a tragedy into a triumph," he said.