Call it fate, spiritual intervention or just fortunate coincidence, but Rose Collins was away from home at the right time.
While the 67-year-old woman was visiting her niece and nephew two weeks ago, a bullet came flying through her front door on the 1000 block of South Eighth Street.
"Thank God I wasn’t here or I would have got it," the baffled resident said last week.
Sometime between Aug. 21 and the evening of Aug. 25, a bullet pierced Collins’ screen door and the wooden door behind it, then sailed through her living and dining rooms before finally coming to rest in a corner of a wooden china cabinet.
Remarkably, the bullet did not shatter the glass — and for that, Collins credits the watchful eyes of her late husband, whose framed picture sits behind the glass where the bullet landed.
When her 50-year-old niece dropped her off around 10:30 p.m. Aug. 25, Collins waved goodbye and closed her front door. That’s when she noticed the hole in the screen door, and then the hole in the wooden door.
She looked around some more and eventually found the bullet, which she gave to the Third District officers who responded to her 911 call.
"I was shook up," Collins recalled. "My heart was racing like a nut. Who would do something like this?
"I don’t have any enemies," she added. "I don’t bother anyone. I don’t hurt nobody."
While an investigator with South Detective Division was able to confirm that a bullet fragment was recovered from Collins’ home, several attempts to reach the assigned detective on the case were unsuccessful. The resident said that no detective has come to her home.
Collins even attempted to call Mayor Street, but got nowhere fast. The woman who answered the phone identified herself as a "sergeant" and was less than cordial, the resident said.
Meanwhile, as Collins searches for answers, she said she hasn’t been able to get a good night’s sleep.
The full extent of the bullet damage would reveal itself over the course of the following week.
Collins uses the side of her china cabinet to hang clothes. Last Tuesday, she moved some clothing she had placed there and discovered another bullet hole. And during a reporter’s visit last Friday morning, she was inspecting each article of clothing when she noticed the bullet also had pierced a silk jacket, a woolen sweater and a brand-new black blouse.
Collins was horrified.
A couple nights before, when she reached to turn on her living room lamp, she almost cut herself on the bulb — which, she then discovered, was shattered, the broken glass scattered on the end table and floor. Amazingly, the bullet apparently missed the delicate lamp shade.
Next to the lamp are pictures of the Infant Jesus and St. Anthony. "They had to protect me. Definitely, positively," Collins said.
She also believes her late mother was looking out for her. Photographs of her mother adorn the cozy living and dining areas.
Whenever Collins mentions her mother, she starts to cry, for she spent much of her life as her mom’s caretaker. In the final three years of her mother’s life, the dutiful daughter would leave home only to deposit her mother’s check; everything else was delivered.
"For three solid years, I did not leave this house," Collins said emphatically.
Until her death in May at age 99, her mother always reclined on the living room couch — mere feet from the door where the bullet entered.
The Eighth Street house has been in Collins’ family for three generations. (The resident’s maiden name was Trigone.) Her maternal grandmother bought the property in a sheriff’s sale, and when Collins was 15, she moved in with her twin brother and parents.
When she got married in 1958, Collins moved to a third-floor apartment at Ninth and Catharine. Years ago, she moved back to take care of her ailing mother, who had inherited the home from her own mother.
Collins said she promised her mother she would never sell the house. Even an errant bullet can’t chase her out.
"I love my home and I’m going to be here," she said. "When God takes me, He takes me."
