By Janet Silvera, Freelance WriterWESTERN BUREAU:
AUDREY STEPHENS lived in Waltham Park, Kingston 11, for several years. She heard gunshots morning, noon and night, but nothing prepared her for the barrage of high-powered shots that flew over her head last Saturday morning.
Ms. Stephens, a vendor at the Charles Gordon Market, Montego Bay, was one of the three occupants of the vehicle that was riddled with bullets by the police on Saturday morning in the community of Flankers.
Sixty-three-year-old David Bacchas, the driver of the vehicle, and his passenger, 67-year-old Cecil Brown, a newspaper vendor, died during the incident.
The 54-year-old grandmother escaped with only a graze to the foot and a number of pellets that are still to be removed from her right hand and foot. Her thoughts, however, are with her taxi driver who transported her regularly and her neighbour, a newspaper vendor, who were not as fortunate.
"I could not sleep last night, when I looked and I realised I was still alive, I stayed up all night, thinking about it," she told The Gleaner.
Indeed, Ms. Stephens was very lucky to have escaped with her life after relating the terror she experienced at 4:00 a.m. on Saturday.
"As soon as mi board di vehicle, mi see a head a peep from behind a parked truck, mi go fi go say to 'Indian' (David Bacchas) a who dat, but mi say to miself him must si di person," she said.
After passing the truck, she said she heard, "blou, blou, blou...mi lie dung inna di caar, and mi hear more shots."
Ms. Stephens said she told 'Indian' to stop the car and he did.
When she came out of the vehicle she saw the police running towards them. "By this time mi smell death, mi hear more shot, so mi go dung pon mi bottom." And that was the last set of shots she remembers hearing.
She said she saw a policewoman in the group and glimpsed a shimmer of hope, "di policewoman say stay right here so," she recalled.
By now David Bacchas, who was shot in the back of his head and chest, was dead and Cecil Brown was barely capable of answering her queries of whether or not he was okay.
Ms. Stephens' common-law husband, Ransford Ramsey, heard all the gunshots from his bedroom, watched the police through his windows, but was unaware his wife was their target.
"I heard the explosions, but never thought it was her," he said.
Audrey Stephens doesn't think she will be able to leave home at 4:00 a.m. anytime soon. "This is really going to affect my business," she predicted.
Business aside, she will never be able to trust the police again. "I am very fearful of them, when I see them I feel a certain grief in my heart," she remarked.
"They must have noticed it was a woman that went in that car."
The people in Flankers have a lot of unanswered questions: Was this a case of mistaken identity? Was Audrey Stephens saved by the lone female police officer? Who is responsible for these deaths?
