DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A DeKalb County pastor’s wife is fighting for her life after she was shot in the head by a stray bullet as she was sleeping.
The shooting happened on Wilkins Court in Decatur early Wednesday morning at the home of Mack Ellison, a pastor at Temple of Faith Ministries.
Channel 2′s Bryan Mims spoke to Ellison outside Grady Memorial Hospital on Thursday, where he described the horrifying moment he woke up to find his wife unresponsive.
Ellison and his wife, Lashunda, were asleep in their bed around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday when he told Mims he suddenly woke up.
“I just woke up to very heavy breathing,” Ellison said.
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Ellison shook his wife but go no response. He then called in his children to help turn her over in bed.
“And we saw blood everywhere,” Ellison said.
When Lashunda arrived at the hospital, doctors found a bullet in her head.
“We go back in the house and we see where it went through the wall, and right where she was lying,” Ellison said. “It went through the headboard and right into the top of my wife’s head and stopped here in her sinus.”
DeKalb County police said they are still working to figure out where the bullet came from.
“It hit my wife, and now my wife is fighting for her life,” Ellison said. “Critical condition. And yet, we’re praying, and we’re asking for all the prayers of petitioners, family and friends.”
Ellison said that as a pastor, he is filled with prayer, and hope that his wife will recover. But he’s also filled with anger that a stray bullet would shatter the security of his home.
“You can’t just take a gun and shoot it in the air and not realize what’s on the other side,” Ellison said. “Because what’s on the other side is not just a tree, but it’s somebody’s wife, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s relative.”
Police said that so far, they haven’t identified any suspects. Ellison said he’s in anguish.
“My job is to protect my wife, and I couldn’t protect her,” Ellison said.
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