Victoria Smurfit has opened up about a terrifying ordeal she and her family experienced on holiday.
The actress had a near-death experience while on a trip to South Africa.
She was with her mother, brother and sister-in-law and now ex-husband Doug Baxter when a bullet was fired into the car they were in.
“We were driving this very dark, quite empty street, but a main street and I saw a wine shop with my mother’s name on it and said jokingly, ‘Jaysus, we’ll leave you here’.
“As I pop my head out the window, I could see a couple of fellas out the corner of my eye and suddenly all the air got sucked outside the car – a bullet came in the window to my right behind my head and shot right through behind my husband’s head, missed a balloon and went straight out the other window,” she told The Ray D’Arcy show.
She explained that she saw that she was bleeding and was afraid to look around in case her family had been hurt.
“I shouted, ‘is everyone okay?’ and my brother shouted, ‘Driver, go, go, go!’ like they do in the films because the taxi driver slowed up,” she said.
“We sped back to where we were staying and as we got out of the car, the windows shattered around us and all you could hear around us was Happy New Year.”
The 43-year-old said that it was ‘Kill a Tourist Day’ and that they were probably targeted as “part of a gang initiation”.
Thankfully Victoria and her family were all safe.