sandra

Homemaker
Shot: January 18 1999
Waco Texas
sandra

My mama told me this was a severe shot to the head

Sandra: "I just woke up one day and I was in the hospital. They told me I was shot and I wasn't going to live. I think my former husband had something to do with it. I try to remember who shot me, I can't. My memory is gone, it's disappointing. Mostly I forget what happened a long time ago. My mama told me this was a severe shot to the head. I couldn't walk when I got out of the nursing home, but I can walk now. My left hand is still paralyzed; I hate it, I can't shoot pool. I have one child, eighteen; I don't know what the affect on her is, I didn't ask her. I ain't seen my daughter in two Christmases; her daddy's got her now. I'm remarried. I clean the house and I cook. I worked a lot before, I waitressed."

He says she did it herself

Diana (Sandra's mother) : "We're not exactly sure what happened to Sandra. I have a feeling they were fighting over a pistol. He says she did it herself. She might have been threatening to do it. The angle that the bullet went in, she would have had to be holding the gun almost to the back of her head because the bullet went from the back to the front. The doctor said most people who are going to commit suicide put the gun to their head and the bullet goes straight across. My daughter was supposed to have shot at her husband, and then, while he was on the phone to 911 she was supposed to have shot herself, but there was no gunshot on the 911 tape. Anybody with sense, if somebody shot at him once, is not going to stand five feet away-- where she can shoot at him again--and make a phone call. I have a feeling he might have tried to take the gun, or he hit the gun and it went off. Once before there was an argument and my husband and I confiscated their guns, but they came back and got them. Sandra says in her heart she feels she didn't do this. Sandra loved her daughter so much I couldn't see her doing this. I know her daughter was traumatized. She was only fourteen. She saw Sandra before the ambulance got there. The whole mattress was covered in blood; I can't imagine seeing my mother laying in that.

She was in a coma for four months

"The hollow point bullet took almost the whole side of Sandra's head off. There's a place that you can almost fit your fist in over her right ear. They said she would never live. When she finally started breathing on her own they said she would be a vegetable. She was in a coma for four months. She's had six operations, all skin grafts to fill the hole. She was another year in therapy and in nursing homes. When I got her out of the nursing home she could not feed herself, or tie her shoes. But in a few months she started learning. It has changed Sandra's personality. She was pretty stubborn, controlling, leading the wrong kind of life, now she's like a different person. She looks for the good. If people don't believe in miracles, all they have to do is take a little trip through her life. The doctors said they've never had one with that kind of damage live.

They're just strictly for killing

"I don't believe in having guns in the house. I have never seen so many pistols and guns in my life as these youngsters carry now, and how they get them I don't know. They're just strictly for killing. What other reason would you have a pistol except to kill a person? I believe in ten foot angels! Angels are there to protect us; somebody might still shoot you but then that was God's plan."