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Megan Hiatt, 22, is still recovering in a Florida hospital after allegedly being shot by her boyfriend in a harrowing attack that killed her five-month-old twin daughters and her father.
Although she is still recovering from the tragic loss of her family and physical injuries in the hospital, she is raising awareness about domestic violence by telling her own story through her mother, Melissa Bateh.
Gawain Rushane Wilson, 28, opened fire at Hiatt, their 5-month-old twins, Hayden Rose and Kayden Reese Hiatt, and Hiatt’s father, Travis James Hiatt, before turning the gun on himself at his home in Jacksonville, according to the police.
Bateh revealed how Wilson forced her daughter to hold the twin babies while he shot them.
“He wanted to destroy her world, and he wanted her to watch it be destroyed,” she said.
Bateh explained how Wilson used control by taking away her phone and refusing to let her drive. He would take away her things, verbally abuse her, often calling her fat.
“A parent sometimes knows,” Bateh told First Coast News in an interview on Monday. “I just knew in my gut that their relationship was not a healthy relationship.”
Although it isn’t clear if Hiatt was moving out on the day of the attack, the police found a pickup truck with boxes in the bed in the driveway at the scene.
Each day in the U.S., three women die because of domestic violence and at least one third of all female victims of homicide in the U.S. are killed by male intimate partners, husbands and ex-husbands, boyfriends and estranged lovers.
Also, “50% and 75% of domestic violence homicides happen when the woman is at the point of separation or has already left [her abuser], according to a research.
Despite going through the pain of losing her family, Megan Hiatt is sharing her story with the world because she wants other women to act before it gets too late.
Megan Hiatt was shot around five times, she said, and lost part of a breast. Friends have set up a GoFundMe page for medical costs and funeral expenses.
Agencies/Canadajournal
