A woman who was shot in the hand two years ago is now a changed person, the Hobart Supreme Court has heard.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Josephine Ramos Cooper was a passenger in Olga Neubert’s car on May 14, 2015, when the latter’s husband Klaus Dieter Neubert, 74, blocked his wife’s car at a Hobart intersection, firing shots from a sawn-off rifle.
Mrs Neubert was killed, while Mrs Ramos Cooper sustained a gunshot wound to her right hand, severing two fingers.
Mrs Ramos Cooper is suing Neubert for roughly $2 million in damages.
Her daughter Jacqueline Isa Jean Cooper, 28, of Rokeby, described to the court Mrs Ramos Cooper’s personality prior to the 2015 incident.
“Mum was a happy, confident person,” Ms Cooper said.
“She loved making jokes.”
But Ms Cooper has observed a change in her mother since the incident.
Today, Mrs Ramos Cooper is wary of people and does not like to open up about her feelings.
Wracked by nightmares and flashbacks of the incident, Mrs Ramos Cooper now locks all the deadlocks in the house before going to bed, even asking her daughter to check them again.
Ms Cooper said red traffic lights and stop signs induced anxiety attacks in her mother following the incident.
Formerly a religious person, the court heard Mrs Ramos Cooper had since “lost” her faith.
Mrs Ramos Cooper wears rubber gloves around the house, with cotton stuffed in the right-hand glove to give the illusion she still has all her fingers.
“She doesn’t like using her left hand,” Ms Cooper said of her mother.
Michael Andrew Evenhuis, a forensic psychiatrist, prepared a report on Mrs Ramos Cooper at the request of her solicitors in September 2015.
Dr Evenhuis said it was probable the victim was reminded of the trauma every time she observed her physical defect.
Moreover, Dr Evenhuis said Mrs Ramos Cooper’s post-traumatic stress disorder would likely “follow a chronic course”.