‘I played dead right after he shot me,’ woman says after bullet grazes her head

The deafening gunshot that was fired at her head only grazed her scalp and singed her hair, but Loundia Romeus fell to the street and did not move until her ex-boyfriend walked away.

“I played dead right after he shot me,” she said Tuesday. “All I heard was the ringing of the gunshot in my ear.”

Raphael Juan Campos, 27, is charged with first degree attempted murder with a firearm, domestic battery by strangulation, and firing a weapon in public. He was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail early Tuesday morning where he remains without bond, records show.

Romeus, 20, was walking home from a Family Dollar store in Lake Worth Beach about 8 p.m. Sunday when she sensed someone was following her. She started walking faster and pulled her stun gun device from her jacket pocket just in case.

“By the time I realized it was him he had already grabbed his arm around me and started choking me,” she said. “He pulled a gun out and put it in my [right] side at first and then he put it at my head.”

She said she was begging Campos to stop choking her because she couldn’t breathe. She dropped her cellphone and stun gun during the scuffle then tried to pull away.

“The next thing I knew he pulled the trigger but I tucked my head inside my shoulders and the bullet ended up going on top of my head and my hair ended up getting burnt,” she said.

A scarf she was wearing on her head also showed signs of damage from the shot, detectives said.

Romeus saw Campos running away but she lay still until she couldn’t hear him anymore. She got up, ran home in tears, and called 911.

Detectives recovered her red iPhone, pink stun gun device, a bag of groceries, and a bullet casing from the scene of the shooting in the 1200 block of S. Federal Highway, according to the arrest report.

Romeus said she had bumped into Campos outside her home Saturday night as well, but when he started talking about a reconciliation she just told him what he wanted to hear because she was afraid.

“I was just trying to keep him calm so I could get away,” she said.

The two had dated for about a year but broke up Dec. 14 after an argument that ended with Campos damaging her car. She filed a report with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

He was arrested Monday night near her home about 24 hours after the shooting.

“Even after he thought I was dead, the [detectives] told me that he was waiting for me with a gun [Monday] night outside my apartment because he thought I was there,” Romeus said. “He came back.”

Romeus has since left her Lake Worth Beach apartment to move in with relatives.

“I won’t have peace until I know he’s going to spend the rest of his life in jail,” she said.