PIERCE COUNTY, Wash. -- A young man accused of shooting and raping a teenage girl has had a change of heart.

Travis Gillihan now admits he's guilty of the crime that nearly took the girl's life. Gillihan has had 11 months to reflect on the shooting and raping of a 15-year-old acquaintance.

On Friday in Pierce County Superior Court he pleaded guilty to rape and second-degree attempted murder.

It was Sept. 29 in a remote area south of Orting. Gillihan was giving the girl a ride from one party to another when he got her out of the truck, shot her several times then raped her.

"That's when he shoots her three times and she fell to her knees, and she was like 'Travis, what was that?' And he's like 'It was a cap gun, the one that makes noise.' And she felt her neck and it was all bloody," Kaitlynn Young, a friend of the victim, told KOMO News just days after the attack.

The girl was badly hurt, but she feared for her life and managed to escape through the woods. She managed to crawl to the front door of Gene and Rita Glenn.

"She said there's a guy out here and he's got a rope. And he's trying to do things to me and he shot me," the couple said.

After the teen recovered from gunshot wounds to the neck, abdomen, arm and shoulder, later told detectives Gillihan had attacked her, saying she couldn't believe he thought he'd get away with it.

Desperate for an alibi, Gillihan sent text messages to several friends, asking them to say he never left the first party. He also asked his brother to hide the gun, according to court documents. But the story quickly unraveled and, accompanied by his grandfather, Gillihan turned himself.

After the attack friends of the victim said Gillihan warned them he was going to attack the girl.

"Rape her and kill her and put her in a cardboard box in the ocean," said the victim's friend, Nick Brown, of what he heard Gillihan was planning to do.

Police said it might have been a different outcome had someone contacted police about the threats, but the girl's friends said that they didn't believe the threats and thought Gillihan was just acting out.

Gillihan is being held in the Pierce County Jail. When he is sentenced, he will receive a minimum of 35 years in prison despite the plea agreement, which aimed to spare the victim from having to testify at the trial.