– says spurned boyfriend had vowed revenge

With a bullet lodged close to her spinal cord, Sophia Pitman’s relatives said she will have to seek treatment overseas.
Pitman, who was shot in the chest by an ex-boyfriend, was transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital’s open ward yesterday, following an x-ray. But she is still in pain and more fluid is being drained from her body. Doctors have ruled out surgery here for the woman, saying that she faces paralysis.

Sophia Pitman

Pitman, 22, of La Grange, West Bank Demerara, was in a much better spirits when she spoke with Stabroek News yesterday but said she wants to go home and be with her child and relatives. When this newspaper saw her the previous day, she was teary-eyed and could only manage a few muffled words from under an oxygen mask.

Relatives told Stabroek News yesterday that they haven’t been able to gather much information from the nurses in the ward about Pitman’s condition. They were told to return the next morning to see the doctor. They said they have been informed that the bullet is close to her spine and that she will have to seek medical attention overseas.

As she sat on her hospital bed, Pitman spoke of the shooting and the welling up of the jealousy and anger that led to it. She said she was on her way to her mother’s Robb Street home to pick up her three-year-old daughter when the man (name given) walked up to her and while holding onto her said: “So yuh get new man now? Yuh family find somebody else for yuh?” This occurred at the corner of Robb and Cummings streets around 8 pm.

Pitman said the man then told her, “let me and you play a game,” and pulled out a gun. She said he told her it contained two bullets; one for her and the other for him. Before she could react, she said, he had placed the weapon under her right breast. She said she then saw something like lightning but didn’t hear a gunshot.

She fell to the ground, bleeding from her nose and her 25-year-old ex then exclaimed, “Sophia where yuh get shoot? In yuh belly? Oh $#!# I gotta get out of here!”

He ran off, and she managed to get up, she said, but only managed to cover a short distance. The young woman said she then saw “a junkie” and begged him to stop a car for her. A car later stopped and took her to Georgetown Public Hospital and according to Pitman she was conscious throughout.

Reflecting on her ill-fated relationship with the man, Pitman said they were together for four years but things changed when they went to work in the interior with her relatives. She said she never expected it would reach a point where she would be seriously injured.

They moved to the interior after the man had a falling out with his mother, Pitman said, but after they got there her relatives did not approve of the man and they told him to leave. Pitman said she decided to stay and her decision angered him and he vowed to take revenge. This was early last year.

Pitman finally returned to the city and in February of this year, she said, the man chopped her on one of her hands. Asked if he had ever been abusive before that day, she said no, adding that he was “always a nice person”. However, after he chopped her, she said, showing this newspaper the scars on her hand, she made a decision to end the relationship, angering him even more.

She later found somebody else.
Pitman said that persons close to the man have said that he had fled to Linden but she is unsure if he has relatives living there.
Asked why the man would have reached the point where he wanted her dead, she responded, “Is because I move on with my life and tek somebody else.”