Local TV is atwitter about the “first” opportunity today to hear from the solider who survived the terrorism-inspired shooting at a recruiting station last week. First for them, maybe.

Garrick Feldman, whose Leader newspaper covers northern Pulaski County like the dew, has already interviewed Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, (shown in the Leader’s photo second from left with his family) who’s home recuperating in Jacksonville from multiple gunshot wounds.

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He thinks he survived by playing dead.

Ezeagwula was shot in his neck, back and buttocks. He tried to run, fell down and played dead.

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“I was bleeding, but I didn’t think I was seriously hurt,” he says.

When Muhammad drove off, the Jacksonville teenager started crawling back toward the recruiting office.

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As he lay wounded, he called his mother on his cell phone to tell her that he was all right, but she didn’t answer.

A sergeant came running out from the recruiting office. “He asked me if I was OK,” Ezeagwula said. “I told him I’d been shot.”

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As they put Ezeagwula in an ambulance, the sergeant called the private’s mother to tell her that he’d been shot.

“Who would have thought something like that would happen at a recruiting station?” she asks.

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UPDATE: More from CNN.

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