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Boyfriend shoots girl in her face

She skipped school to be with him; now she is in critical condition. He says it was an accident.

By ALEX LEARY
Published October 20, 2005

	Ivery Sturgis, above, told police he shot his girlfriend, Jovanna Jackson, below, in the face by accident. Police said he told them he thought the gun's safety was on.

ST. PETERSBURG - Trina Graham overheard her daughter's boyfriend bragging about a Lincoln Navigator, jewelry and cash.

"He doesn't have a job, how's he going to get these things?" Graham asked her 15-year-old daughter, Jovanna Jackson. Graham worried Ivery Sturgis, who had run afoul of the law before, would ensnare her daughter in something bad.

Stay away from him, she warned Jovanna last month.

But Wednesday morning her fears were painfully realized. Sturgis, police told her, shot Jovanna in the face.

The 18-year-old told police he was playing with a 9mm handgun and thought the safety was on when he pulled the trigger.

"I'm so numb I don't know what to say," Graham said outside Bayfront Medical Center, where Jovanna was in critical condition Wednesday night.

"He had no business with a gun. He's 18 years old," seethed Jovanna's father, Kevin Jackson. "We've just got to keep praying."

St. Petersburg police, who said Sturgis has an extensive juvenile criminal history, arrested him on a charge of delinquent in possession of a firearm. He was being held Wednesday in the Pinellas County Jail.

Wednesday morning began as usual. Graham drove her daughter to the bus stop just before 5:30 a.m., said goodbye and kissed her on the forehead. But Jovanna never got on the bus to Dixie Hollins High School, where she is a junior. Instead, it seems, she walked to Sturgis' apartment at 3797 37th St. S.

Just before 10 a.m., a shot rang out. The bullet fired by Sturgis smashed through Jovanna's nose, traveled down into her jaw, where it knocked out five teeth, then splintered.

Fragments damaged her spinal cord, her mother said.

"It didn't paralyze her, though," Graham added. "It's pretty ugly but at least it didn't go into her brain."

Graham said doctors plan to operate on the spinal cord next week and Jovanna will have several more operations after that. "She'll go through a lot before it's over," Graham said.

Police said Sturgis called police after the shooting. "All indications were he was remorseful," said police spokesman Bill Proffitt.

"We constantly tell people never point a firearm at someone," Proffitt added. "That's the cardinal rule for gun safety. It defies rational thinking why he would point a gun at somebody and pull the trigger."

It was unclear where the gun came from, Proffitt said, but Sturgis may have gotten it from a family member. Sturgis' family could not be reached for comment.

An ambulance's wail awoke Erica Brown, who lives in the apartment complex. She saw police leading Sturgis away. "He was crying, saying it was a mistake," Brown said. She said neighbors heard him shooting the gun behind the complex a few days earlier.

Worry hung heavy over Graham as she waited outside the hospital for word from doctors. More than a dozen family members stood outside, including Jovanna's grandparents, who raced down from Tallahassee. No one talked much.

"She's just an average teenager," Graham said. "She was an honor roll student but lately she's been in the boy world and her grades started dropping. Just stuff girls do."

Jovanna's older sister, Vershauna Mays, managed a laugh as she described her as goofy and a picky eater.

"She likes to pinch," she said.

But Mays, 20, didn't want to talk much about Sturgis. Yes, I've met him, she said tersly.

"Right now," she said, "it's not a good time to ask me how I feel about him."

[Last modified October 20, 2005, 01:44:19]