HUDSON, Fla. — A Pasco County woman said more than a year after she was shot by her neighbor while standing on her own property, she’s waiting for restitution and justice.
Jessica Orlando was hit with dozens of pieces of birdshot after her neighbor shot her with a shotgun.
The suspect claims he was shooting at her dogs.
But Orlando believes she wouldn’t have been hit so many times if he wasn’t aiming for her.
Woman peppered with birdshot
“Caller’s advising they heard arguing and then heard shots fired. We have an additional caller calling in now saying someone got shot,” a dispatcher said on the radio in body camera footage obtained by the I-Team.
The video shows a deputy’s response on Feb. 9, 2023, to a shooting in the Hudson community in northwest Pasco County.
The deputy encountered Steven Brodie in the driveway of his rental home.
Moments earlier, he shot his neighbor Orlando using a 20-gauge shotgun loaded with birdshot.
Brodie said he was aiming for her dogs because they came on his property.
“The one that’s the most vicious stopped and turned, and I thought he was going to run up the porch after me, so I shot,” Brodie told the deputy.
Animal control had been called weeks earlier after Orlando’s dogs dug under her fence and went into Brodie’s yard.
“She started screaming like a Banshee”
“What’d you shoot? Did you shoot into the air? Did you shoot into the ground?” the deputy asked.
“I shot into the ground,” Brodie responded.
Orlando described what happened more than a year after she was shot.
“When I hit the driveway is when I saw him with the gun. And I thought it was pointed at me. So hands up right away,” Orlando said.
A single shot was fired from the shotgun.
Birdshot hit the entire left side of her body from more than 50 yards away as she turned away.
“Once he did shoot, she went nuts,” said Brodie’s daughter, Stephanie Brodie, told the deputy.
“She started screaming like a Banshee,” Brodie said.
97 entry wounds
“I'm screaming and screaming, and I’m slowly going like this because there’s blood everywhere, and I'm slowly walking my way back up to the house," Orlando said.
Orlando was rushed to Bayonet Point Medical Center.
“She's just all peppered from her legs up, but it doesn’t appear to be anything serious,” a deputy said on the body camera footage, briefing his colleague who arrived after she had been taken to the hospital.
“I counted 97 entry wounds,” Orlando said.
The police report said the fence between their properties is 101 feet from Brodie’s front door.
Orlando said she was standing well behind her fence line when she was shot.
“I don’t think it was so much of an accident,” Orlando said.
Brodie wasn’t immediately arrested.
A deputy wrote in his report, “I am unable to prove that Steven intentionally meant to shoot Jessica.”
Shooter charged with a misdemeanor
The case was turned over to the state attorney’s office, which charged Brodie with a misdemeanor count of culpable negligence five months after the shooting.
Orlando believes he should have been charged with a felony because she believes he had to have been aiming at her to hit her with so much birdshot at that distance.
“My dogs are here, and I'm all the way over there. And my entire left side has bullet entries,” Orlando said.
Brodie has pleaded “not guilty” and has another court date next month.
“Every month it’s just been continue to next month, continue to next month. Which is dragging it out for some reason. I don’t understand why it's been so long,” Orlando said.
We contacted Brodie, who referred us to his attorney. The attorney said he was in a trial and not available to respond.
“The whole left side of my body’s scarred. That's never going to go away,” Orlando said. “My left eyebrow. I got shot in my lip, my jaw.”
Orlando said she was told the birdshot would fall out, but she said most remains in her body 14 months after she was shot.
“They're still inside. They're still there. You can feel them,” Olando said. “Eventually, I started to cut them out myself.”
She worries the longer she has to wait for the trial, the longer it will take her to get restitution, which would allow her to seek medical care.
“I haven’t been able to go to the doctor. I don’t have insurance. I don’t have any money I can put towards doctors. It’s not cheap,” Orlando said.
And she worries the longer lead remains in her body, the greater the chance that something could go wrong.
If you have a story you'd like the I-Team to investigate, email us at adam@abcactionnews.com
