In March 2014, Timira Hopkins was shot by her then-boyfriend.

Tyrone Turner / WAMU

WARNING: This story contains graphic descriptions of domestic

violence that some readers might find disturbing.

Timira Hopkins knew her boyfriend was angry that she had stayed late at her grandmother’s house one day in
March 2014, instead of being at home waiting when he got off work.

She had seen him upset before — often, even. His rage
would routinely erupt into acts of violence, leaving her
with black and blue bruises across her face. He
sometimes threatened worse.

“He was like ‘If you don’t come home by 4:00 p.m.,
I’m going to kill you,’” Hopkins said. “He would make
threats like that all the time, but he never went through
with it.”

But when she arrived home that March evening to a

darkened house and saw her boyfriend of five years
holding a butcher knife, she sensed something had
changed.

“He was just standing there … like he was a demon,

like a demon possessed him,” Hopkins recalled.

Her boyfriend dragged her by her hair across their home and into the bedroom. That’s when she saw the gun.

“I got down on the floor, and I covered my face because he always told me, ‘If I don’t kill you, I’m going to
make sure you’re unpresentable,’” Hopkins said.

What happened next is a blur. She awoke, covered in blood and with a chunk of her cheek dangling from her
face.

When she stumbled from the bedroom into the living room to try to get help, she found her boyfriend on the
ground, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

“I told [the paramedics] ‘Please don’t let me die …’ That was my last words to them, and then I went in the
ambulance,” she said.

Hopkins was shot five times, including in the face, chest and back, but she lived.

Her survival makes her one of an estimated 900,000 women alive today who have been shot or shot at by an
intimate partner.
“Many U.S. homes have firearms in them. They also have domestic violence in them,” said Susan B. Sorenson,
University of Pennsylvania professor and director of the Ortner Center on Violence & Abuse.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One night in 1981, Laura Morris’ husband shot her in their home, the force of which knocked her to the floor.
The bullet had grazed her shoulder and lodged into the wall behind her.Tyrone Turner / WAMU

Nationwide, there have been efforts to strengthen protections for victims

of intimate partner violence, including legislation that would limit
abusers’ access to guns.

Maryland is one of 13 states, as well as the District of Columbia, to have

enacted extreme risk protection orders, which authorize law enforcement
to remove guns from the homes of dangerous people, including
suspected abusers.

These laws, however, are not without critics. Opponents of ERPOs,

sometimes called red flag laws, say these orders could be manipulated to
have firearms unfairly confiscated from gun owners.

Though she survived, the shooting claimed Hopkins’ hearing in her right
ear and the use of half her face. In 2015, nearly 2000 women were killed
by intimate partners.

“Firearms are the most commonly used weapon when an intimate partner kills another intimate partner,”
Sorenson said.

According to Sorenson’s research, women in the United States are more than twice as likely to be shot and
killed by their male partners as they are to be killed in any other way by a stranger.

“Guns figure largely in terms of fatal domestic violence. They also figure into the nonfatal domestic violence,”
she added. Sorenson notes that there are long-term effects of surviving intimate partner gun violence, including
anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Of the estimated 300 people in the United States who are shot on an average day, about 200 survive. But many
of them do so with devastating physical and emotional scars that last a lifetime.

Their ailments range from paralysis and possible lead poisoning, to crippling anxiety attacks and depression.

Eleven survivors of gun violence tell their stories in their own words in Shattered: Life After Being Shot.

Every individual’s story is paired with a portrait, — a composite — using a “stitching” technique that combines
multiple pictures.
 Explore the project, hear their stories

Colin Goddard
Bethesda, Maryland

“The smell of the gunpowder,

the propellant, and the sounds
of everything is when I came
full circle and realized I just
got shot.”
Colin Goddard was in French class on April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech when he heard a series of loud bangs.

Minutes later, he was on the ground in a pool of his own blood, suffering from four gunshot wounds as a fellow
student carried out the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. A gunman killed 32 people and injured more
than a dozen others before killing himself.

“I thought I laid on that ground for hours,” Goddard said. “I’ve learned since it was about nine-and-a-half
minutes from the first gunshot to the last.”

While Goddard’s physical recovery in the months after the shooting went relatively smoothly, bullet remnants
are still in his body, leeching poisonous lead into his bloodstream.

Doctors warn that efforts to remove the bullet pieces are too risky.

“So I am kind of stuck,” Goddard said. “And that’s scary. As much as I thought I survived that shooting
physically, and recovered … it’s not over.”

Deonte Gay & Corie Davis

Washington, D.C.

Hear first from Corie Davis, right, then Deonte Gay, left.

“It’s the best thing that happened to me.” - Deonte Gay

Deonte Gay was planning to pick up his four-month-old daughter and bring her to his mother’s house one night
in September 2010. But instead, while running an errand with a friend who was going to be his ride for the
night, Gay was shot as a random bystander during a robbery attempt on a liquor store a short ride away from his
home.

“Out the corner of my eye, I see the owner raise her gun,” Gay remembered. “And as she’s raising her gun,
when I turn back, he’s firing … But it’s the bulletproof glass. Bounced off and hit me in my neck.”

Gay lost the use of his legs and much of his lower body that night. Now in a wheelchair, he says the shooting
was the best thing to happen to him.

“I learned so much about myself in this chair,” Gay said. “I boxed myself in while I was walking.”

Since the shooting, Gay has traveled, joined a rugby group for other wheelchair users and learned how to swim
through programs at the MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) in Washington, D.C.

“My life changed for the better … These [have] been the best 10 years.”

“I thought I was dead, you know. But then I woke up in

that hospital a few hours later trying to scratch my nose
… and I realized, ‘I can’t move my arms.” - Corie
Davis
Corie Davis has been in a wheelchair since Aug. 30, 1999, when a physical altercation ended with a gunshot.

“When the bullet hit me in my neck, I just went to the ground,” Davis said. “My eyes closed and I went to the
hospital, woke up [and] I was paralyzed.

In the 20 years since, Davis has become a de facto mentor to many of the young men, including Gay, at the
NRH’s Urban Re-Entry Group, a support group for people with disabilities who are survivors of violence.

“You just gotta take it one day at a time, and do what you gotta do to make yourself happy,” Davis said. “I
mean, you’re going to have your ups and downs, but it is what it is.”

Listen to Their Voices…

Go to Website for more stories and insight: https://wamu.atavist.com/-

Or
https://wamu.org/story/19/09/30/shattered-intimate-partner-gun-violence/
Compiled by Angele White 10-2019