Gardaí in Co Roscommon are investigating the shooting of a woman on a shopping excursion in Boyle at the weekend.
Ms Carol Wood, an English national in her late-30s, who has been living in Co Roscommon for the past seven years, was in a comfortable condition yesterday in Sligo General Hospital after receiving a bullet wound to the head.
She said the injury was inflicted as she made her way from a car-park in Boyle to a nearby supermarket during a shopping trip on Saturday afternoon.
"All of a sudden I felt an almighty force at the back of my head, slightly on the right hand side. It was like somebody had picked up a fair-sized pebble and thrown it at me, literally with their full force, only a few feet or so away."
Ms Wood said she asked a local pharmacist to look at the injury, and was quickly referred to a GP. "The doctor arrived only after a few minutes, and he had a look at it, and he couldn't believe it. He said 'it's a bullet'," Ms Wood told RTÉ Radio. "I don't know whether it's mistaken identity or whether someone was just mucking about with a gun and it ricocheted . . . maybe firing a shot in the air, maybe aiming at birds or something. . .I don't know but it's all being looked into."
Surgeons removed the bullet from the woman's skull and she has since undergone a series of X-rays to assess the extent of her injuries. She said she still felt "shook up" yesterday. "At night, it's really bad because you start to relive it all again, and you feel it and remember exactly what happened, and hear the impact."
In the initial aftermath of the shooting, she said she felt dizzy and was afraid of passing out. "I thought something had fallen out of the sky. I thought something had come down from an aeroplane, or something had ricochet up from the car that had just gone past me."
Detectives have since taken the bullet away for forensic examination.
Ms Wood said when she saw the bullet, after it had been removed, "it was sort of like squashed down because of the impact . . . Luckily my skull is hard and it stopped it."
Gardaí said they were looking for witnesses to the incident, which occurred at about 3 p.m. on Saturday.
