Woman feels lucky to be alive months after being shot 5 times
The Nashua Telegraph (Nashua, NH)
August 16, 2009
By ANDREW WOLFE, Staff Writer ([email protected])
NASHUA ` The first bullet hurt like hell, and Kara Kevorkian collapsed
face down on the floor.
"It was this terrible, terrible burning feeling," she recalls.
Mercifully, she wasn’t conscious for the next four rounds. Kevorkian,
then 35, came around soon afterward, though. Her hair was stuck like
glue to the floor. She couldn’t get up, she could hardly breathe and
she knew she would die if she didn’t get help soon.
The man she knew as Sergio Tapia was gone.
Her daughter, Netaya Kevorkian, had heard "Serge" and her mother
arguing and heard some popping sounds, but it was 2:40 in the
morning. The 16-year-old didn’t fully wake up until minutes later, she
said, when she heard her mother calling out for help.
She found her mother on the floor of the apartment at 151 Concord St.
"She was in the room, like, laying in a puddle of blood," Netaya
Kevorkian said.
The teen could tell that her mother had been shot. She didn’t realize
she had been shot five times at point-blank range with a .357-caliber
Magnum.
Each of the five rounds passed through Kevorkian, and two punched
through the floor into the apartment below. The first bullet went in
her abdomen and out her back. The four fired at her back punctured her
liver, a kidney and a lung. A shot through her left arm severed a
nerve, causing permanent damage.
"It’s a miracle I’m still alive. I ask myself every day how can this
be," Kevorkian said.
"I am lucky that this is all I came out with," she added later. "I
feel grateful that this is all I have," she said of the nerve
damage. "A lot of people out there have it a lot worse than I do."
Daughter kept cool
Kevorkian credits her daughter and her surgeon, Dr. Edward Flickinger,
with saving her life. Netaya Kevorkian, a Merrimack High School
student and cheerleader, called 911 and followed instructions. She
gave a description of Tapia’s car an paramedics arrived. She doesn’t
know how, but she kept her cool.
"She’s my hero," her mother said. "It was pretty horrific. . . . She
did not panic. She didn’t even pause, no freaking out at all, she was
right on it."
Kevorkian said she stayed conscious until she was sedated in
preparation for surgery at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center. She
remained in a coma for six days afterward.
She woke up terrified, thinking "Serge" might come back for her at any
moment, she said.
"I was so freaked out," she said. "For like a week, week and a half
after I woke up, I was so scared. I was a mess."
Kevorkian has been undergoing counseling to treat her post-traumatic
stress disorder and doing physical therapy for her nerve damage ever
since, she said. Kevorkian had been an avid bodybuilder and cyclist,
but it took a long time to heal and regain her physical strength, she
said.
"Mentally, I’m working on getting stronger."
Several aliases
Kevorkian was able to identify "Serge" as the man who shot her when
police got to her apartment. Police soon found his full name, Sergio
Tapia, although it proved to be an alias, and broadcast a description
of him and his 1996 Mitsubishi around the region. They found his Glock
33 pistol in her kitchen trashcan.
Pelham Police officers spotted the car and stopped "Serge" on Bridge
Street less than an hour after the shooting on Nov. 7. A bag of
cocaine fell from his pants as they were frisking him, according to
court records, and police could feel what proved to be another bag in
his pocket.
After his arrest, Kevorkian learned that Sergio Tapia was just one of
several names that "Serge" had used. He had different Social Security
numbers to go with his aliases, too, court records show. Police
believe his real name is Juan Mateo Sanchez, 45. He is a U.S. citizen,
born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Puerto Rico, according to
court records.
Sanchez agreed to speak with police and admitted to shooting
Kevorkian. He has been jailed since his arrest, and he recently agreed
to plead to charges that included attempted murder in exchange for a prison
sentence of at least 20 years.
As of Wednesday, a plea and sentencing hearing hadn’t yet been
scheduled, however, court records show.
Kevorkian had met "Serge" about five months before the shooting, she
said in a recent interview with her daughter at Greeley Park.
"A couple of my friends introduced me to him, and we went out on one
date. It wasn’t really a romantic relationship. . . . We were
friends," she said. "We dated briefly, and then we decided to be
roommates."
"Serge" helped pay her rent, she said, but he also kept an apartment
of his own in the old YMCA building on Temple Street. Things were good
for a while.
"In the beginning, he was a very generous, very nice man, but he just
got too weird," Kevorkian said.
The more Kevorkian got to know of Sanchez, the less she liked, she
said. Kevorkian didn’t know that Sanchez had done time in a New Jersey
state prison for a 1993 drug conviction. She knew only that he was
bossy, easily offended and slovenly in his housekeeping. He treated
her more like a servant than a roommate, she said, and as their
relationship grew strained, he got nasty.
"He had threatened to kill me three times, and I had told three
different people," Kevorkian said. "I didn’t take it seriously until I
saw the gun."
In the weeks before the shooting, she learned he had bought a gun,
although he promised to keep it at his Temple Street apartment, she
said. Just a few days before the shooting, she found a small bag of
what appeared to be cocaine under her couch. Kevorkian had already
begun to suspect Sanchez was dealing drugs, she said.
"I kind of caught on," she said. "His phone was always ringing when he
was around, and he was hardly ever around. . . . I’m not stupid."
When she found the cocaine, Kevorkian said she told "Serge" he had to
go.
"I just wanted him gone," Kevorkian said. "I found drugs underneath my
couch, and that’s when I addressed that, that night, and told him he
needed to go."
Sanchez didn’t like what he was hearing, she said.
"He wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer," she said, and they kept arguing
after she got home from work at a local restaurant that night.
His behavior seemed odd, even under the circumstances, she said. She
tried to walk away and cut off the quarrel, but he wouldn’t leave or
drop the dispute.
Kevorkian said she remembers Sanchez suddenly crouched down against
the kitchen wall, and in the same, sweeping motion, pulled a pistol
from the back of his pants. He shot her first in the belly, and things
went black.
Acts of kindness
At the suggestion of her boyfriend’s mother, Kevorkian’s daughter kept
a sort of visitor’s diary in her mother’s hospital room so people
could jot notes and let her know they’d been there to see her.
That was just the first of many acts of kindness bestowed upon them,
Kevorkian and her daughter said. Friends in Merrimack took her
daughter into their home while Kevorkian was hospitalized and then
recovering with a relative who works as a nurse in Massachusetts.
The school district helped her daughter with supplies, local families
helped with clothing, food and other necessities, Neteya Kevorkian
said, and the school resource officer, Michael Murray, arranged for
the supplier to donate a class ring for her.
"What they did for my daughter and myself, it’s just amazing,"
Kevorkian said.
Prosecutors and the victim-witness advocates from the Hillsborough
County Attorney’s office also have been supportive, and they even
found a donated mountain bicycle for Kevorkian, as her own disappeared
in her move after the shooting, she said.
Kevorkian said the shooting in some ways has brought her family
closer, too, and she said she has since met "the love of my life."
Kevorkian declined to say where in New Hampshire she lives now, except
to say that it’s north of Nashua, and rural.
"Some of the best gifts come in some of the ugliest packages, and some
really awesome things have come out of this," Kevorkian said.
That isn’t to say Kevorkian is prepared to forgive and forget.
rkian agreed to Sanchez’ plea deal, she said. She was relieved to
avoid the ordeal of a trial and having her daughter and former
neighbors testify.
Ideally, Kevorkian said, she would like to see Sanchez shot five times
at close range, as he did to her. She’s willing to settle for a
lengthy prison sentence, however.
"He knew what he was doing that night," Kevorkian said. "I believe in
an eye for an eye. I know that probably sounds angry, but I still am a
little angry for what that man has done to my life."
Sanchez won’t be eligible for parole until he serves at least 20
years, under the terms of his plea deal, and he will remain on parole
for 50 years.. He won’t get out any younger than 64 years old.
"I believe if he got out any sooner than that, he would try to find
me," Kevorkian said.
If he never gets out alive, Kevorkian said, that would be all right
with her..
Andrew Wolfe can be reached at 594-6410 or
[email protected].
telegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090816/ NEWS01/308169915
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
