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TEACHER WAS SHOT BY HER NEIGHBOUR
Bullet lodged in woman’s head for a year after frenzied attack
A TEACHER living in Portugal died after being shot during a frenzied attack by her neighbour who then turned the gun on himself.
An inquest heard this week how Kirsty MacGowan, 59, was flown back to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington to be with her daughter at her Marylebone flat, but never recovered.
The bullet remained lodged in her skull for a year as she slipped in and out of a coma and eventually died of pneumonia in January.
Ms MacGowan, who taught English to Portuguese schoolchildren, had only been living in the Algarve fishing port of Olhão for three years.
Westminster Coroner’s Court heard how a feud with her neighbour, 70-year-old Portuguese national Manuel Julio Den Carnacao Botelho, escalated from verbal death threats into the shooting on December 15, 2007. He fired a pistol at another woman and her baby son before shooting Ms MacGowan outside her front door as she tried to flee.
Botelho attacked her with a walking stick before shouting “today you are going to pay for it”, pulling out the pistol and opening fire, ?according to evidence read out in court from the Portuguese Ministry of Justice. Reports in Portugal alleged Botelho was angry with his neighbour for feeding stray animals and parking in front of his house.
A stand-off between police and the man then ensued. Holing himself up inside his house, Botelho threatened to shoot anyone who tried to enter. During the negotiations, police agreed to call his daughter, but he took his own life before she arrived.
After two months in a Lisbon hospital, Ms MacGowan was flown back to London where she was admitted to the intensive care unit at St Mary’s. She was described as being in a “vegetative state”, being fed through a straw in her chest while being visited by her daughter Jane MacGowan who still lives in nearby Ossington Buildings just off Marylebone High Street.
A statement from her daughter said: “Kirsty MacGowan went to Portugal for a new challenge and to keep up her job as an English teacher.”
Coroner Dr Paul Knapman recorded a verdict of death by bronchopneumonia due to a missile head injury. |
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