A grandmother narrowly escaped serious injury or death on Monday night, after gunplay outside her Barataria home led to a stray bullet entering her bedroom and grazing her left breast as she slept.Everil Phillip, 52, said she was asleep around 8.15 on Monday, when a bullet came through her galvanise roof and grazed her body."I heard a loud noise on the roof, and I jumped out of bed. I thought something fell on the roof," Phillip recalled.
She said she looked up and saw a hole in the roof, then felt "a burning" on her left breast. When she touched her breast, she said, she felt blood and realised she had been wounded."I started to bawl," she recalled, saying she then realised the bullet was lying on her bed.
"It just came through the roof and hit me," she said incredulously.The wound is now swollen, bandaged and discoloured, but is less painful, Phillip told the T&T Guardian.
Phillip lives on the Eastern Main Road and police believe the bullet came from a gun which was fired in the air."It's shocking. I was shaking. But I thank God, I could have lost my life right there on my bed." Her 13-year-old granddaughter, Natifa George, was sleeping in an adjacent bed, and was also shaken by the incident. Phillip said she immediately asked to go back home to her father after the incident.Phillip said it could have been worse.
"If I was lying a little more to the left, it could have gone through my heart. I thank God for life."Her son Jason Phillip has since patched the hole in the roof.Phillip was treated at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope, where her wounds were dressed and bandaged. She is recovering at home, taking antibiotics and painkillers.