–and lived to tell the tale

By Shauna Jemmott
THE astounding story of 27-year-old Tomeicka Miller-Patterson is one of survival in the face of the most gruesome form of abuse, even as death came knocking at her door.

Tomeicka’s testimony is one of hope, endurance and resilience, even as she acknowledges the presence of God with her even in her darkest hour.
And although she survived the unsurvivable, she is yet fighting for survival for herself and daughter as she tries to find a way to put the pieces of her life back together.

TRAGEDY STRIKES
One night in February, she was aroused out of her sleep with the realisation that she had unconsciously made a mistake by allowing to work a relationship that had already been dismantled. After objecting to the man on whom she had walked out sleeping in her house while he was no longer her man, he retaliated by stabbing her more than 27 times.
Andrew Patterson, her 32-year-old husband and attacker, was found hanging by a tank in the village the day after the attack; but Tomeicka has been broken, torn, literally ripped apart physically, emotionally and psychologically. Nevertheless, as she rightly put it, “God saved me.”
Sunday Chronicle caught up with this remarkable woman at her home in Parfaite Harmonie, one she calls her greatest gift since tragedy first struck.
Recounting the events of the darkest night of her life, Tomeicka said that after an eventful day, terror struck at sometime around the season of Mashramani 2013. There was a greasy-pole fun event as part of Republic celebrations at Goed Fortuin, West Bank Demerara, where she lived at the time.

“That night, I finished selling and I tucked in my daughter (to bed). I was sleeping on the bed with her and I heard a knocking on the door. He came very late.”
She said she had, a few months before, ended the relationship with her husband, who was cheating and had become a “smoker”. She knew he smoked marijuana. While the two were living downstairs at his mother’s house with their seven-year-old daughter, her husband had lost his job at the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) and had become frustrated, while she worked as a cook at Sita’s Bar in Georgetown.

He became excessively jealous, and would track her down, sometimes standing almost nightly at the corner just to see which vehicle she travelled home with, and sometimes travelling to the city, screening her from a viewable distance in the dark just outside her workplace.

She was his married wife at the time, and they were living together. He always waited a while after she entered the house before proceeding into the house himself, but she observed him many of those times. He also had an affair, and they would fight constantly over the other woman, monetary demands, and every little thing, triggering her alerting him and his mother that she was moving into a house she had shared with her mom, who had already passed on.
The dreadful attack came just months after. When she opened the door on that fateful night, he said he would like to have a talk, and she agreed; and in the midst of many questions and complains, she answered negatively to his key question.
“He asked me if I want him back.”
She said the man proceeded to ask if he could see his daughter, and she chose not to deny him the opportunity.
“He went in and picked up my knife on the way… He wasn’t a violent person, so I wasn’t scared of him.”
Although they had had fist fights before, the man had never used a weapon in any of the brawls. He went on the bed near his daughter, and after he fell asleep, she joined them.
“I jumped out of my sleep and I remembered everything, and I asked him to go.” It was late in the night. “He said, ‘so you want me to leave?’” And while she answered, he drew the knife from his pocket and forced it into her left side breast, before drawing it out. Her daughter woke up when she began to run.

BLOOD EVERYWHERE
“All I could remember (was) seeing a whole lot of blood. He stabbed me (first) to the side of my breast. I run through the back door and run over the road at the tyre shop,” she revealed.
At this point of telling the story, she began crying. The woman had mentioned that she does not talk about the tragic events, nor does she even remember the date it happened; but she is reminded every day that she had travelled the abusive journey that took her close to the end of life’s road.

“He went to a wedding in the village (and) he was drunk.”
She said that on that night, there was no one to save her life, as the guard at the tyre shop was “locked inside”; and though he began shouting at her wrathful attacker, the man took to his knees while she fell on the floor and stabbed her profusely.
“I was so weak, I couldn’t even scream.” She said she felt an unbearable pain from the very first wound, but her husband behaved as if he was going mad and was about to kill her.
Though she seemed to confront death face-to-face, her path has been redirected to a new life; but it is one which is still so hard to live.
“I gave up on life that night. I could remember telling him, ‘Andrew, leave me leh I die’. I gave up, but God didn’t give up on me. I know of people who get one stab and died.”

As he stabbed her repeatedly, she kept holding on to the knife but he pulled it violently away, “bursting my hand (with every pull).” She was fighting to fight him off, and it was a pretty long knife.

THE VOICE
“In the midst of it all, I could remember this voice just telling me ‘turn on your back’,” she said. “I was so weak, but I found the strength to turn. He was on his knees. All the other 18 stabs, I received them in my back.”
She said she is grateful to God for giving her the strength to follow that life-saving instruction.
“There is that moment in your life where you can say ‘yes, there is a God!’ and that was my moment. I knew it was God who told me to turn on my back”.
The pain never stopped that night, and until now it dwells in her.
“I could remember asking for water, but Uncle Shawn said he wouldn’t let me drink water. They keep talking to me and asking me questions when they taking me to the hospital.
At the hospital, my eyes was closed but I could remember hearing everybody voice. I hear Sharmaine (a fellow villager) and someone else screaming, and then is when I said I really deh bad,” she recounted.

“I remember seeing plenty doctors around me and the doctors stitching and cutting me like if I was a piece of cloth,” she said, adding, “I felt everything”.

It was a miracle that she lived, but life was a path she was destined to take.

They found her husband hanging dead the next day. She spent five days in hospital; and being discharged the day of his funeral, she cried for many things. Their daughter is now nine years old, and Tomeicka says that although it was her child’s father who had tried to kill her, it is hard to watch her child grow without a father.
It is hard to work with wounds that have affected her lung and destroyed the nerves in her left hand. The cuts in her hand she received while fighting back have resulted in her hardly being able to grip anything with her hand, but things are getting better. She walks briskly and flashes a quick smile every now and then, but no one knows the extent of her indwelling pain.

STRANGE FIRE
A few months after that devastating incident, a strange fire burned her house down. A security guard next door, the only witness, said the fire had travelled along the electrical wire straight to Tomeicka’s house.

A woman stronger even more than she realises, Tomeicka believes every path of her life was destined to be, as her Pastor once prophesied that God has a blessing in store for her.

“One Sunday after church, my Pastor was praying. My eyes were closed but I felt it as he was standing in front of me. He said, ‘Tomeicka, raise up your hand’, and he touched the palms of my hands and he said ‘receive it’. I didn’t know what I had to go through to get it,” she pointed out.

But Tomeicka believes that the blessing is a house she has received from Habitat for Humanity. Tomeicka said she believes God has been merciful to her because of her dedication towards building the church. The two-storey building was being erected while she was still lived with Andrew, but that relationship was full of storms. She would climb to the roof daily, not just working, but it was a daily climb to freedom.
“I always used to be on the roof. I just use to feel free, like I just wanna do something for God. My Pastor always asked us ‘Who going up?’ and I would say ‘Pastor, I going up’,” she said, and added, “When I came down, I had to return to problems”.

GOD IS IN CHARGE
Tomeicka’s life is a testimony of God’s power to deliver, and it is an example to many. She recalled that, in her younger days, her mom never trusted Andrew, and had warned her against the relationship. She now advises young women to always trust the instincts of a mother.

Now she works three days weekly at Sita’s Bar, but with just $10,000 weekly in her pocket, it is very difficult to make ends meet, especially with a daughter preparing for National Grade Six Assessment Examination early next year, who is scheduled for an eye-surgery. She is asking President David Granger or any other individual to please assist her, since her needs far outweigh her income. The 27-year-old woman, who had also dropped out of school (at Kuru Kuru College) after her mother took ill, is seeking assistance for a chance to write the Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate Examination (CSEC), so she can have a better chance at a better life.

Ever since her attack, she has never received counselling, and is seeking help to find peace inside.
She wonders who will answer this time around as she cries for help.