A survivor of a drive-by shooting is claiming she was sent home with a bullet lodged in her head because doctors failed to spot it.
Shakena Jefferson, 42, was taken to Jackson Memorial South Medical Center following the attack, which took place outside her home in south-west Miami-Dade County last Tuesday, February 11.
Shakena was one of three people injured in the attack, but doctors allegedly did not perform an X-ray and told the shooting victim she had only suffered a graze wound.
Hear about how doctors later discovered the bullet below:
The injured woman’s wife, Janet Medley, told ABC News doctors bandaged a wound near Shakena’s left temple and sent her home with antibiotics, but she continued to complain about a pain in her head.
Janet explained:
My wife told me that she was having these terrible headaches and she felt something moving in her head. She was experiencing short-term memory loss. She couldn’t remember anything. She kept on repeating the same thing over and over.
On Friday, three days after the shooting, the concerned wife decided to take Shakena to another hospital, where doctors immediately X-rayed her head and found the bullet.
The 42-year-old underwent emergency surgery at Baptist Hospital of Miami and is now recovering.
The couple, who were preparing to go food shopping, were getting into a car outside their house when the shooter drove by.
Recalling the scary situation, Janet said:
The guy must have had an automatic weapon because I can still hear the gunshots in my ears, ‘Pop, pop, pop, pop.’ It wouldn’t stop.
Janet badly banged her knee while opening the car door in an attempt to escape the bullets, though she never made it inside. She believes if she had, she could have been fatally injured.
She explained:
God was protecting me. I had angels protecting me because I was outside and I couldn’t shield myself and bullets were just flying and nary a bullet hit me.
If I had gotten into the car, I would have been dead because a bullet went right over the driver’s seat.
Shakena was in the passenger seat of the car when she was hit.
Police believe multiple shooters were involved in the attack, though no arrests have been made at the time of writing, February 19. Investigators are still trying to identify the shooters, who witnesses said were riding all-terrain vehicles and fled the area after firing shots.
All three people injured in the attack were gay, though Detective Argemis Colome of the Miami-Dade Police Department told ABC News investigators have not classified the shooting as a hate crime.
He said:
We’re definitely looking into it as a very violent crime. We’ll see if we get more information and if it does come to that then obviously there will be an additional charge that we can add.
As of now, we don’t have enough to determine that. We’re not discarding it, but we don’t have enough right now to definitely make that an additional charge.
One of the three injured people is said to be in critical condition.
Shakena is expected to make a full recovery, though she and Janet are planning to contact a lawyer to take legal action against the hospital that initially sent her home.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.