Pamela Bryant lived to tell her story. If the three bullets had went anywhere else or her parents didn’t insist on quality medical care, she would have been dead, murdered by a gun fired by her abusive boyfriend on April 24, 2007, outside Scotland Neck.

Bryant spent seven years in a hellish relationship, beatings, in and out of the police station and the courthouse and finally in a hospital bed where she was in a coma for four days.

Even as she stood before a group of social workers, mental health providers, law enforcement officers and judicial officials, Bryant carried the wounds of domestic violence. She’s deaf on one side and she has to take medicine to prevent blood clots because some of the bullets couldn’t be removed.

“He tried to take my life but the Lord was not ready,” she said during a Lunch and Learn sponsored by Making Abusers Accountable for Intentional Actions in Halifax yesterday. “He shot me three times and I’m still here.”

From what she thought was love came jealousy, she said. “He became jealous. He didn’t want me to go out with my friends.”

The first time, the man, Douglas Jamal Pender, who is serving a 15- to 19-year sentence for attempted first-degree murder, knocked out her teeth. In six months she had a black eye. “He said he didn’t mean it, he’s sorry.”

There was still that jealously and during one argument he told her if she left he would kill her. Even after she took out a restraining order, he wanted to make up. “We ended up together again,” she said.

The couple had a son together and she knew she had to work, Pender all but unable to hold a good job because of a previous criminal record. “He wanted me to sit at the house. If I was not at the house he would accuse me of cheating.”

Even while she worked, Pender would call her job, telling supervisors she was selling drugs. “He was to the point he didn’t want me to work,” she said.

Then came April 24 and a set up by Pender as her parents tried to persuade her to leave the man. “I felt in my heart I should listen to my parents,” she said.

He called her to come to his parents’ house on Winslow Road. He would eventually come to the house with a gun in his hand, his son sitting in his girlfriend’s lap. Then he fired, a shot to the ear, a shot to the neck and a shot to the breast.

As she lay there bleeding — she would eventually lose 5 pints of blood — she could hear him still fussing. He took off with his son and then fired shots when he was outside. He remained on the lam for seven days before his parents took him to Halifax to turn himself in.

She was airlifted to Duke University Medical Center where she fell into a four-day coma. She was in intensive care at Duke for 48 days and had two aneurysms while there.

“The next couple of months I felt I was losing vision in my left eye,” she calmly said. “They found another aneurysm.”

Bryant believes Pender should have got more time. “I’ll never know why he did it,” she said. “He was mean, hateful and jealous.”

Halifax County District Attorney Melissa Pelfrey clearly remembers the case, starting Bryant’s case, but leaving for another job before it got to court and a plea was accepted. Still, the DAs office became close to Bryant. “My office wanted to be here when they found out she was speaking,” she said.

Available resources

The MAAFIA task force works with community agencies which include the Halifax Department of Social Services, District Attorney’s Office, law enforcement, Hannah’s Place and the judicial system, along with the community to enhance safety in domestic violence situations. It is the group’s goal to promote unity, heighten domestic violence awareness, facilitate domestic violence prevention and locate service delivery models to help victims of domestic violence.

The group meets the third Thursday of every month at 1 p.m., usually in the Grand Jury room of the Halifax County Courthouse. For more information contact Arnethia Nicholson at 252-536-6553 or Michele Braswell at 252-536-6559.

The following are numbers to call when these situations arise:

1. • Hannah’s Place crisis line at 252-535-5946.

2. • Halifax County DSS at 252-536-2511.

3. •Five County Mental Health Authority at 1-877-619-3761.

4. •Halifax County DAs Office at 252-583-4801.

5. •Legal Aide at 1-800-682-0010.

6. •National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

7. •North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence at 1-888-232-9124.