Thirty-six year old Michelle Pyle, shot in the leg after being attacked and robbed by two gunmen in Lamaha Street Kitty last Friday night, remains warded at the Female Surgical Ward of the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH), nursing a gun-shot wound to the right femur.

Michelle Pyle in Graphics

The bullet which entered the inner side of the leg exited through the right, shattering the bone in the process. She is to have a steel plate inserted, the injured woman said.

A mother of three, Pyle who is security guard employed by “On Guard” Security Service, related to the Chronicle the harrowing experience in which she was shot and relieved of jewellery, and a handbag containing cash, a cellular phone and her identification and bank cards.

She recalled that around 21:15 hrs on Friday, as she was leaving the home of her cousin Gillian Lyken, they stood at the gate conversing, when she suddenly felt someone snatch at her neck, taking a firm grip of two gold and a silver chain she was wearing and forced her back into the yard. As she was backing the road, she impulsively turned and realised she was being attacked by two men, she said.

Pyle recalled she struggled briefly in an effort to save the jewellery, and the man, tightening his grip on her, forced her back into the yard. Terrified, her cousin ran back into the house.

Then using expletives, one of the men demanded that she loose the chain. Forcing her into a dark corner of the yard, he made a desperate, but failed bid to relieve her of a pair of gold earrings she was wearing as well It was at that point that she realised that both the men were armed with handguns.

In the struggle, the chains Pyle was wearing burst and fell to the ground and the younger of the two hastily picked up the gold ones, leaving the silver one on the ground. Simultaneously, the elder of the two began tugging at her handbag and she resisted him. Enraged, he discharged a bullet in her right leg, causing her to fall to the ground. On hearing her agonising cry, her cousin Lyken ran out of the house and summoned help; but the men who had come on foot ran out of the yard with the booty and disappeared into the darkness.

The injured woman was rushed to hospital and the police summoned.

Thanking God, from her hospital bed, that her life was saved, Pyle also lamented the loss of her jewels, adding that the bigger and more expensive chain was a gift she had received from her husband for Christmas.