Koonawarra mother Renae Sullivan remembers pulling aside a curtain to see Adam Scott Murray on her doorstep, just seconds before he raised a gun and shot her in the face.
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Ms Sullivan, 22, had been out the back of her house having a cigarette with her 27-year-old partner when Murray knocked loudly on the front door.
She returned inside to answer the door moments before he shot the firearm through a window, lodging a bullet between her eyes.
Her four children, including tiny twin boys, were home at the time.
Murray, who pleaded guilty to the shooting earlier this week, fled the scene and ran to his cousin’s Dapto home, arriving only to reveal: ‘‘I f---ed up ... you need to help me, you need to drive me away; I shot someone, I f---ed up.’’
The Berkeley man had been downing shots of bourbon in a drinking game earlier in the day and left his mate’s Koonawarra home with a towel-wrapped object down his pants.
He told his friends he was going to see Ms Sullivan’s partner, Wollongong District Court heard yesterday.
He arrived at the couple’s Fowlers Rd home about 6.30pm on February 15 last year and knocked three times.
Ms Sullivan ran to the door, pulled aside the sheet covering the window, and saw Murray standing in the doorway.
Murray then shot the gun through the window.
Ms Sullivan sustained a gunshot wound across the bridge of her nose, between her eyes.
Her partner ran to Ms Sullivan’s aid to find blood running down her face as she yelled that she couldn’t see.
When the victim’s sister arrived, Ms Sullivan named Adam Murray as the shooter: ‘‘It was Muzza ... Adam’’, she told her.
Ms Sullivan was air-lifted to Sydney’s St Georges Hospital where she underwent surgery to remove the bullet.
She was later transferred to the brain injury unit at Liverpool Hospital.
Meantime, Murray fled to his cousin’s house where he confessed to the shooting before he jumped in the pool with her children.
Murray, then 26, was arrested in Oak Flats less than an hour after the incident and charged.
Ms Sullivan, who has permanent damage to the left side of her face from the ordeal, was in court on Tuesday when Murray pleaded guilty to one count of discharging a firearm with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
The court was told a piece of the bullet remains inside Ms Sullivan’s brain and cannot be removed without causing further neurological damage.
Murray will re-appear in court for sentence on April 12.