Miss. woman shot in head recovering
Published 11:08 pm Tuesday, June 9, 2009
A Mississippi woman who offered a deputy a cup of tea despite being shot in the head is slowly recovering from the wound, but she said she doesn’t remember much of the episode.
Tammy Sexton told the Mississippi Press that the events of that night — when authorities say her husband shot her before killing himself — are difficult to grasp.
“I’m still just trying to figure this all out,” said Sexton, 47, of Harleston, Miss.
Sheriff’s officials said Donald Ray Sexton shot his wife in the head on April 14 before killing himself on the back porch of their home about 30 miles northeast of Pascagoula. He had been ordered to stay away from her just days earlier because of a history of domestic violence.
Tammy Sexton was shot in the forehead, and authorities at the time said the bullet passed through her brain, exiting the rear of the skull without causing major damage.
The Mississippi Press reported Monday that the authorities’ initial accounts were wrong. The woman actually had a second wound on the back of her head that was mistaken for an exit wound.
Still, with the slug from a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol lodged in her brain, Tammy Sexton not only made tea after being shot but offered a cup to the sheriff’s deputies who were called to the house after the shooting.
Sexton said that she can’t remember everything that happened after she was shot, but that she doesn’t doubt the account from officers.
“I don’t really remember making the tea, but it’s what I would have done, so I have no doubt that I did,” Sexton told the newspaper.
Donald Sexton, according to his wife, was an alcoholic and he showed up intoxicated, knocking on the door while a female friend was visiting her at the house. She went to the front door and chaos ensued.
Sexton said she still loves and misses her husband.
“I just didn’t think he would do that to me,” said Sexton, who was hospitalized for a week in Mobile, Ala., and is now recovering at home.