By: Kizzy Coleman
For two years, she suffered severe beatings at the hands of a man she truly loved and wanted to please.
She was battered and bruised for many days but never got the courage to leave because the “love” kept her back.
Now that he is dead, she does not know if she feels relieved, sad, or just a little bit of both.
But what she does know, is that the fear that of him ending her life no longer exists, even as she lies on a bed at the hospital battling injuries he inflicted when he tried to kill her.
Faith Thompson, at just 20-years-old, is a domestic abuse survivor.
On Tuesday last at around 11:00hrs, she was shot to the back of her head by her ex-boyfriend of seven years. The man, 24-year-old Daniel Hinckson, later turned the gun on himself. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the GPHC.
Thompson recalled that on that dreaded day, Hinckson had broken into her home at Norton Street, Georgetown. She had just two weeks ago secured a restraining order against him. The young took out the restraining order after Hinckson had beaten her mercilessly.
Thompson said she heard a knock on the door and when she went to inspect, she saw her former lover on the other side.
Frightened, Thompson immediately grabbed a bottle of pepper spray, which she had in the house.
However, before she knew it, Hinckson had gained entry into the house through a window.
“So, when he jumped in, I ran to the back door but I couldn’t have open it so fast, so I run into my uncle room and I hide,” the young woman recounted as she sat on the hospital bed, recovering.
Even behind bolted doors, the petrified young woman knew she was not safe. Her aunt, who was at home at the time, began to question Hinckson about how he got into the house.
“He tell she that my uncle give him the key but my uncle didn’t give him no key because the door was locked. And if you get a key, you still can’t open it from outside. So, I know that he jump through the window because the window did open,” Thompson related.
After he finished telling his concocted version of a story of how he gained access into the house, the now dead man took out a gun, “cranked” it and placed it on a table. He then began pacing in front of the room she was locked in. Like a scene out of a story, he picked up the gun, jumped a wall, and was in the room with her.
“When I saw the gun, I started crying and I asked him why he gotta do this and he said that I make it so. And he was saying all kind of things and afterwards, he put down the gun on the bed and he took out a knife he also had from his pants’ waist. He had me in the bedroom for like a whole half an hour talking a whole set of things.”
During this period, Thompson’s uncle returned home from work and after being informed that the duo was locked in the bedroom, the man began demanding that the door be opened.
“He saw when my uncle came in from the window, so he pick up back the gun again and I tried to calm him down and I telling he go under the bed and hide but he didn’t want to do that. So he try opening windows to see if he could jump through but then he tell me to jump through the window and I tell he I can’t jump through the window because is a upstairs.
“But then I tried to tek he mind off of what was happening and I tell he go to the front window and jump and then I will jump but then while I doing that my uncle start yelling y’all open this door” the victim explained.
Grateful for the distraction, Thompson revealed that she quickly pulled out the bottle of pepper spray from her waist and sprayed Hinckson to his eyes.
This caused a fight to ensue between the two and it was at the time that Hinckson used the gun to fire a shot to the back of Thompson’s head before turning the gun on himself.
“He fight me and put me on the bed and he shot me but like he couldn’t see good but then I hear a next gunshot but I thought he shoot me again or shot my uncle. But after a while, I realise that I ain’t dead so I get up, open the door and when I turn around I see he lie down by the wall robe in blood, so then I run outside and run pass my uncle, I run out on the road.”
Thompson reportedly lost her shirt during the fight and ran on to the roadway half naked calling out for help. However, she was rescued by her uncle, who quickly wrapped her with a towel and rushed her to GPHC.
The young woman said she left the relationship because of her former boyfriend’s abusive nature. But she never thought that the young man would have still been torturing her.
Today, Thompson is grateful for her life. “Pepper spray saved my life,” she said.
