A MIRACLE from God.

That's the only thing that could possibly have kept 75-year-old Eunice Agard alive today.

One of the most frightening dramas was played out in her home in Tichbourne, Howells Cross Road, on March 26, 2002, when a man seeking refuge from flying bullets ran into her small one bedroom wooden house.

At the time Agard, who suffers with her heart, had just taken her medication and was sitting watching television, cradling a baby – one of her great grandchildren – in her arms.

She recalled seeing this shadow whiz past her and before she knew it, her granddaughter who was "big pregnant", was screaming for her.

"It happened so fast; I didn't see what clothes he had on, I didn't see who he was; if he went through the back door or what.

"My grand daughter called me and I asked her where she was and she said the bedroom. I ran into the bedroom figuring she was in there hiding.

"When I bound in there with my grandchild in my arms, I looked on the bed but I didn't see anybody. Then I heard her say, 'come grandmummy'. When I gone now I saw my granddaughter pushed up behind the door and he was behind her," said Agard.

She added: "I started screaming. All I could do was holler and call on my God. All I heard was bruggadung! bruggadung! I said: 'Oh Lord, don't kill me and my granddaughter'."

The next thing she knew she was lying on a hospital bed. Agard suffered a mild heart attack and collapsed from all the trauma. She spent about two weeks recovering at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Her granddaughter and residents had to fill her in on what happened after she discovered the intruder.

She said in her shock, he managed to take the baby from her and used the child to shield his face.

It was at this point that Agard fainted.

Residents who reportedly heard gunshots called the police. They responded quickly and at the end of it, they held two men for questioning – Nigel Pinder, alias Bounty, of Cox Hill, St Philip, and taxi driver Adrian Vaughn of Pinder's Gap, Howells Cross Road, St Michael.

Vaughn was slapped with a 12-year prison sentence in 2003. He pleaded guilty to having an unlicensed .32 calibre pistol and two .32 bullets.

In a written statement back then, Vaughn stated that Pinder went to his house the day of the incident and made threats to him and his family, so he shot him.

It is alleged that Pinder then ran into Agard's home seeking refuge.

Up to this day, Agard doesn't know why he chose to invade her home. She had the door closed as she always did when her grandchildren were visiting. Unfortunately, it
wasn't locked.

Only a few minutes earlier she was standing at the door talking to one of her neighbours. It was shortly after she closed the door that the incident occurred.

Her granddaughter, she said, suffered cuts to her feet from broken glass caused by either stones that were thrown at the house or bullets.

Her house still has evidence of that day. A hole in the partition is a constant reminder. It is poorly hidden by a wall ornament.

Agard told the SUNDAY SUN that shortly after the episode, she received strange calls from people offering to fix her home. But she didn't bite.

"They told me they were going to bring money and that they would repair the house, if I could get a carpenter.

"Every minute the phone was ringing, ringing. Even before I came back to my normal self in the hospital, a lady went to me and told me, 'Ms Agard, we can repair the house?' I said: 'Don't touch that house'. As foolish as I am, I told them don't touch that house. I didn't go to school too long but I got common sense," she said.

Doctors told her not to go back home, fearing it would trigger another attack so she stayed with her daughter for a while to recuperate. But Agard became homesick and despite advice from her children not to, she went back home.

"I started to get bored. I said: 'Look, I didn't do anybody nothing. And if they could come from nowhere and break down in here then I could come back in it'. So I went home; I wasn't frightened.

"I prayed and prayed, and I asked God to show me the way; show me why that man came in here. My God showed me that he ran in for refuge, not to kill me.

"If he had run in to kill me he would've killed my granddaughter with the child in her belly, or even me, after he took the baby from me," she said, adding:

"The Lord brought me back out for a reason. I suffer with pressure and sugar too but I wasn't to die that way."

These days, Agard enjoys the peace and quiet of her neighbourhood.