When her friends invited her to hang out, then 14-year-old Deserae Turner agreed because she wanted to spend time with the boy she liked.

Little did she know that they were actually planning to hurt her and rob her.

Deserae Turner was a typical high school teenager living in Logan, Utah and studying at Green Canyon High School.

She lived a normal life until that day in February 2017 when her “friends,” Colter Peterson and Jayzon Decker (both then 17 years old), invited her to hang out. They then took her to a canal in Smithfield, Utah, shot her in the head, robbed her, and left her for dead.

She laid unconscious for eight hours before two volunteers finally found her.

When Deserae didn’t come home during her usual time, her mother, April, became worried. April and her husband reported her missing and a search party began for the teen.

She would then spend the next nine weeks in the hospital.

“My first memory is my dad coming and holding me when I woke up in a mysterious place. He said, ‘Des I want you to know that you’re safe but you’ve been shot and you’re in the hospital,'” Deserae recalled. “My big question was who. Who would do this? And I finally found out later down the road and it was kind of a shock to me. I was like wow, I thought we were friends.”

When the police asked the two boys why they shot Deserae, Colton said that she annoyed him with her constant texting and messaging him. He complained to his friend, Jayzon, who told him it would be easy to get rid of her.

The judge sentenced them both to 15 years to life in prison.

“What’s really helped my heart is knowing that well Colter was sad for his mistakes,” Deserae said. “I know that he felt remorse and… I felt sorry for him after. And after I wrote a letter to his parents saying how I felt bad. [But with Jayzon] he had no empathy and I didn’t care. It was like, ‘screw you’ kind of thing.”

Two years later, Deserae has had thirteen surgeries. Ten of them were brain surgeries. She underwent intense physical therapy to retrain the left side of her body. She has regular chiropractic sessions to manage her chronic pain and sits in a hyperbaric chamber to return oxygen to her brain.

But, despite all these setbacks, Deserae was determined to push herself.

“She had to relearn everything,” Deserae’s mother, April, said. “She is the most determined person I have ever known and I saw it in her even as a toddler.”

Deserae’s doctors gave her possible outcomes about her future but Deserae refused to believe that was to be her fate.

“Give me a goal,” Deserae said, “give me something to work for and I’ll get it done as fast as I can.”

And she did. She wanted to graduate with her class and now, because of her determination, she will be marching with them on time.

And her classmates wanted to give her something special.

First, they nominated her for Homecoming Court. And when it was time to vote for Homecoming Queen, Deserae won by a landslide.

Her English teacher, Alexis Bird, called her while she was en route to her doctor’s appointment and asked if she had time in her schedule to be Homecoming Queen.

“I was so surprised because I didn’t even know I had been nominated,” Deserae said. “I had never anticipated that I could be queen of a dance, so of course I said, ‘Oh my gosh, yes!’”

Her teacher was so happy, especially since he was so nervous before he called her.

“I was really nervous to call them because I didn’t want them to think that it was some charity, because she legitimately won,” Bird said. “Her peers voted for her because she embodies exactly what we want Homecoming queen to represent at our school. “I don’t think she got voted because of what happened to her. I think she got voted because of the person that she is.”

Watch the video below to find out how Deserae prepared for her coronation as Homecoming Queen.

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.

Source: FOX 13 News Utah