The mother of an 11-year-old girl shot in the head during a neighbourhood dispute says she is still haunted by the bullet being fired into her car.
Phoenix Newitt was hit in the face, skull, and neck by bullet fragments that travelled to her heart after the low-calibre round shattered the car window.
Her mother Sarah Newitt tearfully recalled the horrifying experience from the young girl’s bedside in Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.
The mother of an 11-year-old girl shot in the head during a neighbourhood dispute says she is still haunted by the bullet being fired into her car
Phoenix Newitt was hit in the face, skull, and neck by bullet fragments that travelled to her heart after the low-calibre round shattered the car window
‘The man pulling a gun, aiming, and then pulling the trigger, the glass breaking and Phoenix being hit… it’s all I keep seeing,’ she told 9 News.
The 30-year-old said she wasn’t angry and didn’t want revenge, just for her daughter, who only woke up from a coma on Monday, to get better.
‘Hi everybody, for helping me, thank you,’ Phoenix said in a video from her hospital bed.
Police allege the shooting stemmed from a fight between Ms Newitt and another woman, Brianna Mansell, about an hour beforehand in Deloarine, Tasmania.
Phoenix Newitt, 11, shot in the face as she sat in a car in Deloraine, Tasmania
Police allege the shooting stemmed from a fight between Ms Newitt and another woman at a local Woolworths, which gave her two black eyes
Ms Newitt said the fight started when she smiled at a third woman Brianna Mansell (pictured with her boyfriend Nathan Richard Campbell) didn’t like
Police alleged Campbell, 25, fired on their car from about 50 metres away with a small-calibre rifle, hitting Phoenix
Ms Newitt said the fight at a local Woolworths, which gave her two black eyes and her opponent a bite mark, started when she smiled at a third woman Ms Mansell didn’t like.
‘She hit me over 10 times to the face, she just would not stop. She hit me and pushed me to the ground, I hit my head. Phoenix, the little darling, said “don’t worry mum i’m videotaping it”,’ she claimed.
Police were reviewing the footage allegedly showing the fight as they investigate what happened next.
Ms Newitt and her brother Zack drove to Ms Mansell’s house on Stagg Court to confront her, with Phoenix and Mr Newitt’s four-year-old boy in the back seats.
The shooting stemmed from a fight between the girl’s mother Sarah Newitt (pictured with Phoenix) and another woman about an hour before the shooting
The bullet rebounded off the car’s passenger door, lodging fragments in Phoenix’s (pictured with her brothers) neck and head which travelled to her heart
Ms Newitt then called her brother Zach and they drove to the woman’s house on Stagg Court, with Phoenix and the brother’s four-year-old boy in the back seats
Phoenix pictured on her first day of year five earlier this year
Police alleged Ms Mansell’s boyfriend Nathan Richard Campbell, 25, fired on their car from about 50 metres away with a small-calibre rifle, hitting Phoenix.
‘I’m numb when it comes to him, you could clearly see that my daughter was sitting in that car,’ Ms Newitt said.
Campbell appeared in the Launceston Magistrates’ Court last week charged with grievous bodily harm and recklessly discharging a firearm.
Phoenix still needs more surgeries to remove bullet fragments still lodged in her heart and lungs and may be in hospital for months.
Phoenix was rushed to a local hospital in Deloraine in northern Tasmania by a family member about 9pm on Tuesday after the shooting in Stagg Court (pictured)
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