A Canton woman was watching television in her living room Tuesday evening when a bullet pierced through the ceiling of her apartment and hit her in the chest.
Now, her long road to recovery is just beginning.
Robin Bristow, 53, was sitting in her usual spot inside her apartment in the 900 block of Alan Page Dr. in southeast Canton when she said she heard a boom -- then saw blood spreading across her chest.
"I thought I was going to die," Bristow said from her hospital bed at Aultman Hospital, hooked up to countless needles and tubes.
When she was rushed there on Tuesday, the bullet that had gone in through her chest was later removed near her stomach in surgery. She said 30 staples run up her stomach over the incision.
Bristow's fiancé Rodger Harris had been sitting next to her when the bullet came through the ceiling of their 2nd floor apartment. Every night, the couple watches Lifetime movies together, he said. "She has her spot, I have mine."
"We heard a boom and she said, 'I've been hit, I've been shot," Harris said. "I panicked, she panicked."
Canton Police said the bullet came from Nathaniel Webb's gun and the apartment upstairs. Webb, a convicted felon, told officers he was cleaning the gun when it went off -- and went through the floor of his apartment and into Bristow's.
It's bad as it is, with at least another week in the hospital for Robin, but the Bristow family said it could have been so much worse.
Just an hour before the shooting, Bristow's daughter and grand-baby had spent the day in the apartment. Bristow's granddaughter's usual place is on her lap.
"It could have really been a tragedy," Bristow said.
Webb is being held on a $250,000 bond, charged with discharging a weapon into a home or school and having a weapon under disability.
