Melody Megginson is, without a doubt, a walking miracle. By all medical reasoning, the 26-year-old mom should be dead or, at the very least, barley alive within a vegetative state. Yet, the young woman from Birmingham, Alabama, is slowly and painstakingly recovering from a tragic and terrifying event, picking up the pieces and attempting to live as normal a life possible with her two kids and a bullet still lodged in her head.
Melody’s ordeal began the moment she met her ex-boyfriend, John Nealy III (38). The two quickly became a couple and within less then two months from their initial meeting, Melody was pregnant.
“Looking back, I realized we didn’t really know each other,” she told Inside Edition. “We just kind of went too fast in the relationship.” She noticed that he became controlling when they started lived together.
“He started acting differently, wanting to know where I’m at, who I’m with, what I wear and stuff like that. I realized the relationship wasn’t going to work out,” Melody said. “It wasn’t what I thought it was, and I was trying to make moves to move on to leave the situation. I think he figured that out.”
The relationship quickly deteriorated with John becoming more and more abusive, until the day he became violent and struck her. Melody quickly reached out to her mom, Katrina Aalmo, about what had happened.
“She just wanted to leave. He busted her lip and all that prior to the shooting. And I said, ‘Melody, call the cops on him.’ She just goes, ‘Well, I’m scared’,” her mom said. “She doesn’t know anybody out there, and believe me, I wish I would’ve called the cops and I regret that, but she asked me to try to stay out of it.” A fatal mistake that almost cost Melody her life.
John was a bad dude who had been to prison and was out on bond for capital murder when he met Melody. Although she knew he was in prison, he lied to her about the crime he committed.
The physical abuse continued, unabated throughout Melody’s pregnancy, right up until she gave birth.
Then came that fateful evening in May of 2019, when an out-of-control John Nealy III went on a drunken rampage. Waking up Melody, he forced her outside and into his pickup truck, and drove down the street. He pulled out a Glock .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol and shot her point blank in the head.
“Chances of survival after a penetrating injury to the brain, such as a gunshot wound, is very low,” neurologist Dr. Komal Ashraf told Inside Edition. “And of those patients [who live], we know that about 50% will have long-term neurological consequences.”
After two months in a coma, Melody finally woke up. “I asked her if she could see me and I said, ‘If you can, try to move your hand or your thumb,’” Melody’s mom said. “She moved her thumb, so I knew that she could hear me and see me. I cried. I just sat there and cried and held her, but she couldn’t speak. And she doesn’t know what’s really going on.”
Melody said when she first woke up, she didn’t want to believe what had happened to her or that her ex-boyfriend had truly attempted to kill her.
“I was kind of in a daze. I had tubes out my neck. My arms were tied down to the bed,” Melody said. “For a couple months, I didn’t want to believe that a person I loved did that to me. I just had his child.”
The young mom underwent 13 surgeries for her injuries, and still has more to go.
— Maya Chung (@Mayanyani) January 23, 2022
Melody knows it’s a miracle she survived and she wants to make sure she feels her “purpose”. She also hopes to begin working again one day, something she hasn’t been able to do because of her injuries.
She’s thankful to God that she is still here and thankful to her children for keeping her going.
“Doctors tell me that I should not have survived. Period. I got a 45 [bullet] in my brain and I am walking around living, but I got all my functions,” she said. “I could be worse. I’m definitely blessed, a miracle.”
John Nealy was sentenced to 25 years in prison for first-degree assault for the shooting, and another 20 years for his manslaughter case.
This story syndicated with permission from My Faith News