BUTLER TWP — The last time Jessica McFarland saw her longtime boyfriend, he was running away, gun in hand, after police say he tried to kill her.

The next time she sees Gage F. Carrozzi could be Jan. 3 at his preliminary hearing, which could turn into a face-to-face encounter should she be called to testify against him.

She's frightened at the prospect. But eager, too.

“Part of me, I want Gage to see my face,” the 23-year-old McFarland said Wednesday. “Hopefully, he'll see this woman who did everything for him and he'll see what he did to her.”

Carrozzi, 22, of Lyndora is being held in the Butler County Prison on $300,000 bail. He's been jailed since Monday when Butler Township police arrested him on charges that he shot McFarland at a friend's apartment on Hansen Avenue.

He is accused of firing seven shots through a door while trying to force his way in, as the petrified victim held the door closed.

One of the shots grazed the side of McFarland's stomach. She was treated for the injury at Butler Memorial Hospital and released.

Police from the township, city and state fanned out looking for Carrozzi. He was not at the nearby duplex on Bessemer Avenue that he shared with McFarland. But the couple's two young children were there, alone but safe.

Nearly two hours after the shooting, police arrested the defendant on Armco Drive near the Picklegate Crossing.

He is charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, discharging a firearm into an occupied structure, child endangerment and reckless endangerment.

Online court records did not indicate if Carrozzi has an attorney.

Emotionally scarred and mentally shaken by what happened, McFarland counts herself as a survivor.

She discussed the ordeal during an interview with the Butler Eagle.

Bad break up

She suspected that a breakup the prior night motivated her boyfriend's alleged rage Monday. The two met in high school and they had been a couple for most of the past seven years.

Too many verbal fights, however, had taken their toll. She had grown tired, she said, of his controlling nature and jealousy.

“I finally decided we needed to go our separate ways,” McFarland said.

It was a decision, she noted, not made in haste. They have a daughter, age 4, together, after all. And Carrozzi had cared for McFarland's other daughter, a 1-year-old, like she was his own.

“The one thing I can always say about Gage is that he's been very, very good with our kids,” she said. “He's a really good father, but not the greatest boyfriend.”

She believes Carrozzi, angered over the break up, began drinking after what she claimed was his two years of sobriety.

“I feel if he hadn't drank,” she said, “he wouldn't have shot me.”

On Sunday after work, and after ending her relationship, McFarland went out with friends to hang out.

Gage, home with the children, kept calling and texting her. He wanted to talk — and argue. She didn't.

Hail of gunfire

She eventually turned off her phone's ringer. She also ended up, as dawn was breaking, at the friend's apartment on Hansen Avenue.

That friend, a 25-year-old man, also works with McFarland at a local tobacco store — something Carrozzi knew.

At some point that night, police said in court documents, the defendant left his girlfriend an ominous message: if she brought the friend to his home, he would kill them both.

McFarland suspects someone told Carrozzi where she was about 8 a.m. Monday.

“The next thing I know,” she recounted, “I hear this loud banging noise outside.”

It was her boyfriend, kicking at the door to the second-floor apartment. He also was demanding that she let him in, police said.

Growing more alarmed, McFarland called 911. “My boyfriend's trying to break into my friend's apartment,” she told the dispatcher.

Using one hand to hold the phone, she used the other to hold the door shut and keep the suspect out.

“All of a sudden I heard these loud popping noises,” she recalled. She recognized the noise — gunfire.

Next, she noticed holes appear in the door.

“I was screaming at the dispatcher, 'He's shooting. He's shooting. Please come,'” she said. “It was all in slow motion,” McFarland said. “It was so weird, so scary.”

Panic sets in

Her friend in the apartment told her to get away from the door. He ran to the back of the apartment. She followed.

That, she remembered, is when she felt the left side of her stomach stinging.

“But I didn't want to stop and look,” she said.

The friend jumped out of the bathroom window to get away. McFarland was headed the same way, but stopped.

“I realized it was just too far down,” she said. “I froze. I was too scared to jump.”

She then looked up and saw Carrozzi running away. He was holding a handgun. She screamed out to her friend.

McFarland then saw her bleeding flesh wound, which police say was caused by the defendant's gunfire.

“I got a panic attack,” she said.

Still holding onto the phone, she told the dispatcher on the other end, “I can't breathe.”

Police eventually arrived and she identified the shooter.

“Where are my kids?” she asked them.

A contingent of heavily armed officers went to Bessemer Avenue and surrounded the couple's duplex. They ultimately forced their way in after getting no answer from inside.

The children were fine and carried out by police. Carrozzi was nowhere to be found. But it wouldn't be much longer before his arrest.

Life-changing ordeal

McFarland said the county's Children and Youth Services agency has since taken custody of the children, in the wake of Monday's events.

She wants them back, she said, more than anything.

“I love my kids,” she said, “and anyone would tell you I'm a great mom.”

Her landlord, she said, also has advised that she might be evicted because of the mess Carrozzi left behind Monday. Police made additional damage during their forced entry, she said.

“I lost my kids over this,” McFarland said, “and I might lose my house for the damage he caused.”

Having her boyfriend understand the life-altering consequences of his actions is why McFarland welcomes the chance to testify at next month's hearing.

But understanding and making sense of what happened, she conceded, is not easy — even for her.

“I never thought the man that I loved,” she said, “would actually try to kill me.”