Phil Dowdell's final act was to push his little sister, Alexis Dowdell, out of the way of gunfire at her own birthday party, she told CBS News.
Latonya Allen was chaperoning her daughter's Sweet 16 party at a small dance studio in Dadeville, Alabama, when rumors started spreading that someone had a gun. Allen temporarily stopped the party, turned the lights on and told people if they were over 18 and had a gun they had to leave. Phil Dowdell, Allen's 18-year-old son and Alexis Dowdell's brother, was killed in the shooting.
" got down on her knees and we're holding him. He was just bloody," Allen told CBS News."She was saying, you know, kept telling him, 'Wake up, Phil, wake up.' He was trying to say something, but by that time he couldn't say anything else. And he stopped breathing.""And then when somebody from the ambulance had came in and they felt his pulse and they was like, 'he's gone.
"If it wasn't for him, I mean, I don't know where I'd be," she said."I don't know if I would still be standing here today if he would never save my life." A vigil for the victims was held Sunday night. One attendee, Daquan Doss, had known Phil Dowdell since Kindergarten.
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