Gypsy Jane - I've Been Shot Four Times and Served Three Prison Terms?This is the Incredible Story of by Jane Lee

police. Show me your hands!’ He had appeared from nowhere. He was standing by the side of the van. I hadn’t seen him jump out of the car I had rammed into. The barrel of his gun was inches from my head. Time stood still. I stared straight back at him through the window. It’s now or never, I thought, my eyes darting from him to the turning in the road. I was as calm as you like. Then, for some reason, words that I had lived by came into my head and told me what to do – Mine is not to question why, I am but to do or die. That had always been my mantra when I was in danger. My gypsy blood would never allow me to go down without a fight.
    I laughed in the copper’s face. ‘Yeah, really?’ The reddot of his laser sight was flicking around my face. He wasn’t expecting those words. I supposed I was meant to shit myself and crumble. It didn’t happen. For a long moment the copper was motionless. I knew now that, if I didn’t get away, I’d get it in the head. I laughed again and then smashed my foot down on the accelerator and the van lurched, then roared forward. But the turn was too tight and I lost control and crashed the van into a house on the corner. In the mayhem I didn’t hear anything but the copper I had taunted had his M16 set on semi-automatic and fired off four shots. I could see my hands covered in blood and the windscreen was a red mist. My blood. I’d been shot. Then the van door was pulled open and I could hear the cops screaming at me. They were going mental. I mean mental. ‘Armed police. Armed police. Show us your hands. Show us your hands!’
    I was dragged out of the van and handcuffed. Now I was laughing at them. They tried to spread me star-shaped on the ground but my hands were cuffed above my head. I looked up at them all and laughed again. ‘You load of fucking pigs,’ I said. But before I could finish, six guns came down into my face.
    ‘Shut your fucking mouth or we’ll blow your fucking head off,’ one of them said. There were loads of them, all in full body armour. I was in no doubt that, if I made one false move, I would have been taken out. Another one of the cops stood on my hands and, for the first time, I realised I had been shot in the right hand. Istopped laughing as the adrenalin started to wear off. I didn’t know it yet but in all I’d been shot four times. I knew I was facing serious time and I thought about my boy at home. If I realised how badly I’d been hurt, I would have wondered if I was dying. The first bullet had entered my right forearm and ripped its way down to lodge in my hand. The second had gone into the back of my right shoulder and exited through the front of the same shoulder. The third had entered my back, behind my heart, and the last had ricocheted off the dashboard and got me in the groin. Just my luck. But I still didn’t feel a thing. I knew I’d been shot in the hand because I could see a big hole in it but I hadn’t got a clue about the other wounds.
    The armed police were screaming at everyone coming out of their houses to stay away. I was lying in a pool of my own blood in Royal Close, Ilford, wondering what the hell had happened. I found out later that the police officer opened fire because he thought I was going to run him over. That was what I was told but all the shots came from behind me as I tried to get away. I had been shot in the back, driving away, so how could I have been trying to run him over?
    But maybe I was dying. All of a sudden my dad was there cradling and rocking me and telling me I was going to be OK. I could hear him shouting, ‘Get these cuffs off her. She’s been hit everywhere. There’s blood coming out of her everywhere. We’re going to lose her. Stay with me, babe. You’re going to be OK. I’ve got you.’
    ‘I’m OK, Dad,’ I replied. And that was the last thing I remembered. I passed out. But the man holding me wasn’t my dad. He was an ordinary police officer. Not one of the armed ones. This copper