After being stabbed multiple times by her ex because she broke up with him, Shondell Hernandez is now lying in a hospital bed with no feeling in her lower body. She also cannot move several of her fingers.
Hernandez, 22, of Annandale, East Coast Demerara, said there are still several tests that need to be done in order for the doctors to know the full scope of her injuries, which were sustained during the attack at her home last Friday.
She was stabbed four times to her body and once to her neck. While most of the wounds were minor and did not pose much risk to her, the one to her neck and another caused her left lung to collapse. As a result, a tube was placed inside of her to expand the lung and assist with removal of the blood.
“I feel good and strong and I can breathe on my own,” Hernandez told Stabroek News from her hospital bed, while noting that she is staying strong and fighting because of her three-year-old son. Her ex is the boy’s father.
Hernandez said the attack was “unexpected,” although she admitted that the man had been abusive during their relationship.
The woman recalled being in her living room around 11.30 last Friday morning. The man had called her several times but she did not answer the calls and subsequently decided to call her sister. “I was sitting on the table at the laptop and was on the phone with my sister when I see him coming out of my room and I jump,” she said. It appeared as if the man had been in the room for several minutes before she saw him. “All of a sudden I see him coming out of my bedroom and when the blind move from his hand I see the long knife. It was fine and about six inches,” she said.
When she noticed the knife, Hernandez tried to run towards the front door to escape but the man caught her. “He pulled me back and just start stabbed me up,” she said. When she received the last stab to her neck, she added, she fell to the ground and started screaming, which alerted her grandfather, who was on the veranda. “He [her grandfather] run in and punch him [her ex] to his face and he walk out and watch me there,” she added.
She said after the man left, her grandfather called the community police, who assisted in getting her into a cab that rushed her to the hospital.
Hernandez’s 80-year-old grandmother, who was on the stairs at the time of the attack, said she heard was her granddaughter shouting several times. She said she then rushed upstairs and saw the man, who sped through the front door, ran to the back of the yard, and jumped over the fence.
According to Hernandez, the man had not accepted the break-up. She said that while they have been broken up for several months, he still acted like they were together. “My cousin sent a barrel from America and he would send someone to collect the stuff to sell it. And so, over time, with him coming over, we became friends and he would come a lot,” she said, before explaining that when her ex, who lives in the same village, noticed the man visiting often, he started to visit her at the same. She said while he could not let her go, the man never acted violently or showed signs of violence towards her and the other man.
While the man is still eluding the authorities, Hernandez said that she heard from his relatives, who said he has been calling them from an unknown number.
