Timing’s everything. At least that’s the way Janice McMahan is feeling.
On Thursday night, McMahan stood in front of her mirror, changed into her nightgown and tested her blood sugar. She then left her bedroom, sat down to watch Grey’s Anatomy on TV and heard a bang.
She would soon learn that a bullet had just crashed through her bedroom wall of her condominium and passed right by where she’d just been standing. It turns out that McMahan’s neighbor had just accidentally fired off a 9-millimeter round.
“I’m still a bit shaky,” the 82-year-old Sandy Springs woman said Sunday. “I am so lucky I wasn’t standing there when it happened. I’d just left the room when the bullet went through.”
Sandy Springs police charged the neighbor, whose name has not been released, with reckless conduct, Channel 2 Action News reported. Police also took away the neighbor’s firearm.
Shortly after she heard the blast, McMahan said, the neighbor came by and asked her if she was okay. When McMahan returned to her bedroom, she found wood splinters on the floor and a bullet hole lodged in her headboard. She then called police.
The neighbor later returned to her condo and explained that her gun went off accidentally when she was unloading it, McMahan said. The neighbor said she was about to pack up the handgun because she was moving out of her Glenridge Park condo.
“She said, ‘I didn’t tell you about the gunshot because I didn’t want to upset you,’” McMahan said. “She was extremely apologetic about it.”
McMahan, a native of Iowa, moved to Atlanta in 1972 with her late husband. She’s had four children — one son and three daughters, one of whom died three years ago of cancer.
McMahan said she considers her late daughter to be her guardian angel.
“I feel like she was watching over me,” McMahan said. “I had just left the room. I feel so blessed.”
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