Tracy Lawrence is opening up about a near-death experience he faced 35 years ago, and he says it still affects him physically and emotionally to this day.
In May 1991, Tracy was walking through downtown Nashville, Tennessee when he was shot multiple times during an attempted armed robbery. He recently shared details about that night during an appearance on the Big D and Bubba radio show.
“It was the night after I finished doing background vocals on [my debut album] Sticks and Stones, so nobody knew who I was,” he recalled. “It was a completely random thing… I was just pulling into a parking lot, and then [a] guy stuck a pistol in my face. It was wrong place, wrong time.”
Tracy’s gunshot wounds were serious, and when medical help arrived, he was fighting for his life. He had to have emergency surgery to remove the bullets, but doctors decided to leave one in his hip because it was too close to a major artery. He still has that bullet in him to this day.
Although the “Alibis” singer managed to recover, he says that his past injuries still give him problems.
“Man, it’s caused me a lot of problems, especially as I got older,” he says. “The one that really gave me the most trouble, I got shot through the joint of my left knee, and so I had it scoped three times and I finally wound up having to have a total replacement in 2016. But it’s caused me a lot of other joint problems over the years. I still struggle with it now.”
He also revealed that he continues to have ankle and hip issues as well.
Tracy hasn’t just dealt with the physical pain over the years. He says the attack left him with mental health issues, and he didn’t get help for it until a long time after the incident.
“I never really got help until much later on in life, and it caused me a lot of problems in my relationships,” he admits. “It gave me a real bad attitude about some things for a while because I felt like I survived something that I didn’t know if I should have. It gave me some mental problems.”
Looking back, the 57-year-old wishes he hadn’t waited so long to take care of his mental health. He also shared some advice for anyone listening who might be struggling with their own problems.
“Anytime you go through something traumatic like that, my best advice to anybody is to go get help, talk to somebody because the longer you push that stuff down, the more difficult it is,” he says. “It’s gonna come to the surface eventually.”
Watch Tracy Lawrence speak about his near death experience in the video below.