A woman who had been fighting for her life since being struck by a stray bullet as she slept in her DeKalb County home last week has died.
Lashunda Heath-Ellison remained in critical condition from Oct. 5 until her death Monday, her husband, Mac Ellison, and the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed. Police said the case has been upgraded to a homicide investigation.
Ellison was awoken shortly after midnight at their Wilkins Court home by his wife’s labored breathing, he said in a recent public Facebook live stream recounting the events. “I said, ‘Chelle, quit all that snorin’!’” he said. “She wouldn’t stop doing it.”
He shook his wife, whom he called Michelle, then jumped out of bed and turned on the lights. That’s when he realized something was very wrong.
Paramedics were called, and she was taken to a hospital. A pool of blood was found where her head had been, and Mac Ellison said he originally thought it may have come from her ears.
But at the hospital, doctors found a bullet lodged in her skull. It had traveled through the home’s wall, the couple’s headboard and into the center of his wife’s brain to its final resting point behind her sinus cavity, Mac Ellison said.
“My wife Lashunda Heath-Ellison gained her wings,” Mac Ellison wrote on Facebook the day she died. “I believe to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Please give us a moment to process this. My Perfect Angel is gone but forever in our hearts.”
DeKalb police confirmed the bullet came from outside the home but have not said if any suspects have been identified. Police declined to provide further information Monday.
Mac Ellison, who is a pastor at Temple of Faith Ministries, took to Facebook on Sunday to ask his family, friends and followers for prayers. Doctors were planning to determine the following day if his wife had any brain activity.
Regardless of the outcome, he said, he’d continue trusting God.
“My son’s birthday is (soon). Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday, our wedding anniversary, my daughter’s birthday — all of that stuff is coming up, and I want all of that with my wife,” he said. “I don’t need nobody calling me saying, ‘You gotta trust God.’ I trust God ... I’ve been in church my whole life. You don’t know God; trust God, and I trust God.”
On Monday, he announced the news.
“If you’re really talking about marriage, it is ‘until death do us part.’ And death it was. I love you, Michelle,” he said.
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