Al­most two months af­ter sur­viv­ing a dar­ing heist at Pen­ny­wise Plaza in La Ro­maine, which claimed the lives of her two col­leagues, se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer Pe­o­la Bap­tiste is prais­ing God for sav­ing her life.

Batiste spoke pub­licly for the first time yes­ter­day on her birth­day.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, she said, “It’s a mir­a­cle, even the doc­tors told me it’s a mir­a­cle.”

Cel­e­brat­ing her 58th birth­day with her chil­dren, oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends at her Clax­ton Bay home, Bap­tiste was first thank­ful to God for pro­tect­ing her on that fate­ful day on Sep­tem­ber 19.

“First of all, I want to thank God to be here to­day. With­out Him, I would not be here. I wan­na praise and thank Him very, very much to be here to cel­e­brate this birth­day to­day,” she said.

Over­whelmed by the out­pour­ing of sup­port and love she has been re­ceiv­ing since the or­deal, she said,

“I am so grate­ful for every­body who sup­port­ed me, who pay my med­ical bills and what not. I have been re­ceiv­ing a lot of sup­port. I want to say thanks to every­body out there who are pray­ing still for me. I want to say thanks every­body who sup­port­ed me and still sup­port­ing me, with­out them, I could not do any­thing.”

Bap­tiste was crit­i­cal­ly in­jured and re­quired blood for life-sav­ing surgery. She said some of her in­juries in­clud­ed a shat­tered wrist and two bro­ken fin­gers. While both of her hands are still in casts, she said she was do­ing well and has been walk­ing with the as­sis­tance.

“I have to go to var­i­ous out­pa­tient clin­ics but I home re­cu­per­at­ing, no pain, noth­ing like that,” she said. Bap­tiste was first dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal on Oc­to­ber 23 but days lat­er, she had to be read­mit­ted. She was again dis­charged on No­vem­ber 6 and since then she has been re­cu­per­at­ing at her home. Bap­tiste’s daugh­ters said their moth­er does not speak about her or­deal and asked that she not be ques­tioned about the in­ci­dent or her de­ceased col­leagues.

“I try not to think about it at all. Things will go through your mind, but men­tal­ly I am sta­ble. It don’t both­er me at all,” said Bap­tiste when asked about how she was cop­ing emo­tion­al­ly.

Bap­tiste’s col­leagues, Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers Jef­frey Pe­ters and Jer­ry Stew­art, were killed dur­ing an am­bush by five ban­dits armed with high-pow­ered guns while leav­ing Pen­ny­wise Plaza in La Ro­main, af­ter con­duct­ing a cash-in-tran­sit op­er­a­tion at Pen­ny­wise Plaza. Pe­ters died at the scene while Stew­art died on his way to the hos­pi­tal.

Bap­tiste and an­oth­er of­fi­cer, Al­lis­ter Har­ris, 47, of Phoenix Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices, who was on du­ty at the com­pound, were in­jured. Po­lice lat­er killed four sus­pects who ran in­to a house in their bid to elude cap­ture.

Mean­while, sol­dier Ish­mael Salaam has been charged with mur­der and oth­er of­fences aris­ing out of the in­ci­dent.