The Coral Springs woman who begged a 911 dispatcher for help after being shot inside her home says she thought she’d die with a bullet to the head.
"I was just waiting for the kill shot, to be honest with you. I thought there was gonna be a bullet to my head,” Katherine Maffei said Thursday.
A bullet did shatter her hand, and another one hit her in the chest. They were fired by her estranged husband, Thomas Maffei, police said.
"As my dad and I were trying to close the front door and lock it, he shot three times through the door,” Katherine Maffei said.
She recalled: “My son was saying, don't do it Daddy, don't shoot Mommy."
She said she and her 4-year-old son moved to an apartment in Coral Springs to get away from her husband. He showed up unannounced last Friday and pushed against the front door to try to force it open, but Katherine Maffei and her father, Robert Ranta, pushed against the door to try and stop him from entering, police said.
Thomas Maffei fired three shots that penetrated the door, striking his 40-year-old wife and her 67-year-old father, police said. He then held the family captive inside the apartment, they said.
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"I can't even begin to describe to you how terrifying it was. I mean, we were sitting ducks,” Katherine Maffei said.
She eventually walked outside her home and collapsed, with her father following with his grandson and falling to the ground next to her, according to police. The three were pulled to safety soon afterward as police arrested Thomas Maffei, they said.
The 45-year-old Parkland man faces two counts of first-degree attempted murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed burglary, false imprisonment and child abuse. He is being held on no bond at the Broward County Main Jail, according to online jail records. He does not yet have a defense attorney listed for his case in online Broward court records.
Katherine Maffei said her husband, an Air Force veteran, couldn’t handle their pending divorce and turned to violence.
“My father should never have had to witness what happened to his daughter, and I should never have had to witness what happened to my father and my son, he saw the whole thing,” she said, crying.
Katherine Maffei said she fears her son’s father.
"All I can say is that he better never, ever be let out of jail because if he's let out of jail he will kill us,” she said. “He will come after us."
