Woman Jailed With Bullet in Her Brain Is Near Death : Police: Her mother wants to know why she was kept in an Anaheim cell 36 hours before receiving treatment.

For 36 hours, Nancy Gilmore sat accused of murder in an Anaheim jail cell, with her head swollen dramatically. When police took her to a hospital, doctors discovered a bullet lodged in her brain.

“The doctor said to me: ‘Your daughter came in here and her head was as big as a watermelon,’ ” said Gilmore’s mother, Betty Scott, who flew in from Baltimore as her daughter underwent surgery Monday. “He said the bullet had done so much damage to some parts of her brain that a part had to be taken out. They took part of my child’s brain out.”

Now, as Gilmore lies near death in a coma, her mother is calling for police to provide some answers.

The 30-year-old Gilmore was arrested Friday night after a violent row with a boyfriend at an Anaheim motel. Police found the boyfriend dead of a gunshot wound to the chest, and Gilmore was arrested on suspicion of murder.

Anaheim Police Chief Randall Gaston said Thursday that his officers acted properly at the shooting scene and took Gilmore “straight to the hospital” after noticing that her head was bleeding.

But he said Gilmore refused treatment that night at Western Medical Center-Anaheim.

“In the hospital, she would not allow the doctors to do more than examine her,” Gaston said. “She refused any sutures as well. It appeared she had a laceration. She was medically cleared and returned to the jail.”

Gaston said jail staff members monitored Gilmore throughout the weekend and became concerned as her condition worsened, returning her to a hospital Sunday afternoon.

For Gilmore’s mother, there’s no excuse for the delay. “From Friday until Monday my child was in that stinking system with a bullet in her head,” Scott said. “It was gross negligence on their part, to keep a child, a person, a human being, in jail as her head continued to swell.”

Scott said her daughter, who was deathly afraid of needles and hospitals, may have been too delirious to understand the seriousness of her injuries. The mother contends that police and hospital staff should have suspected sooner that something was seriously wrong.

“She was incoherent. It is that simple,” Scott said. “I don’t understand why Nancy didn’t want treatment, but her head swelled that much was enough for them to realize that it was more than a [laceration]. A baby would have said that it was something more than a cut on the head.”

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Officials at Western Medical Center-Anaheim said Thursday they could not immediately confirm that Gilmore was seen at the hospital the night of the shooting.

Officials at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana--where Gilmore underwent surgery Monday and remained in intensive care--referred all inquiries to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which referred calls to Anaheim police.

Anaheim Police Lt. Ted Labahn said Thursday that the department is no longer holding Gilmore on suspicion of murder. However, Gilmore remained under guard Thursday by the Sheriff’s Department on two traffic warrants, he said.

Anaheim detectives said they are still trying to determine what happened last Friday inside the motel room that Gilmore had shared with Richard Lewis, 30.

Neighbors said they heard a woman scream for help and then gunshots.

When Gilmore emerged from the room, one side of her face was bloody, according to a couple living next door. The motel’s security guard saw Gilmore attempting to leave with blood running down her face and stopped to question her, said a motel manager who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Gilmore told the guard she had been involved in a domestic dispute and had been hit by a bottle, the manager said.

Officers arrested Gilmore on suspicion of murder at 11 p.m. outside the motel in the 3300 block of West Lincoln Avenue.

A close friend who saw Gilmore earlier in the day said she apparently had been planning to leave Lewis, and had rented a car to get away.

“I know how things were before this happened, and I know that she was trying to leave him when this happened,” said Ronald Mathews of Fullerton, a close friend. “She said he had been following her.”

Detectives said they found a gun believed to have been used in the shooting inside Gilmore’s car.

Officers called paramedics to the motel. But Gaston said Thursday that Gilmore refused to let the paramedics examine her at the scene, so officers took Gilmore to the hospital. Gaston said Gilmore told hospital staff the same thing she had told officers: that she cut her head on a door while ducking from a bottle Lewis threw at her.

Gilmore declined a thorough exam, Gaston said, and was taken to Anaheim City Jail. Over the weekend, the jail staff “monitored her closely and noted that she did not seem to be becoming more coherent or improving,” he said.

At 2:11 p.m. Sunday, Anaheim authorities took her to a hospital again. She was admitted to the Santa Ana hospital eight hours later, according to a hospital admissions clerk, and underwent surgery the following day.

“Did we take every step to ensure her medical welfare? Yes. I believe we did everything we’re required to do,” said Lt. Labahn. “Whether a person avails themselves of what we offer is up to them.”

Scott said she called the Anaheim jail from her Baltimore home Saturday and spoke to an officer.

“She said to me, ‘We feel there is something seriously wrong, because of the size of her head,’ ” Scott said. “But she told me, ‘There is nothing we can do for her because she refuses medical treatment.’ ”

Scott said all three of her daughters are terrified of needles. On another occasion, Gilmore refused help at a hospital after being involved in a serious car accident, Scott recalled. But hospital officials “just went completely over her head and said, ‘We have got to serve you,’ ” the mother said.

On Saturday, Gilmore’s 14-year-old daughter, Dayna Brown, visited the jail and said her mother barely seemed to recognize her, Scott said.

Jail officials had to push Gilmore to the visiting booth in a wheelchair, and Gilmore was unable to maintain a conversation, saying she had to lie down, Scott said.

“Nancy and her daughter, they were inseparable,” Scott said. “She usually lights up when her daughter comes around, but Nancy was holding her hand over her eye and when she picked up the phone she just dropped it. She was looking like she didn’t recognize them.”

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Gilmore’s daughter said the bullet removed Monday had entered her mother’s head above an eyebrow.

“She’s lucky she’s not dead,” her friend Mathews said in an interview. “She could have been bleeding inside her skull. It’s hard for me to believe that they didn’t notice the hole in her head had they looked.”

Gilmore, who grew up in Baltimore, had married and moved to Anaheim, but her marriage fell apart. Recently, Scott said, her daughter had been unemployed and having a rough time.

Court records show that Gilmore served time in jail last year after pleading guilty to driving with a suspended license the previous year. While in jail, she was evicted from her apartment. Upon her release, she applied for welfare in hopes of setting up a new home for herself and her daughter.

Scott said her daughter met Lewis last fall. While Scott did not believe the two were intimately involved, she said Lewis was infatuated with Gilmore.

“He spoke to me like a little boy who had a new toy and Nancy was his toy,” Scott said. “He was so excited about her, but he was getting too obsessed and I tried to get him away from thinking like that. I said to him, ‘Richard, if you love her, set her free.’ ”

Scott said deputies have limited her access to her daughter’s bedside, allowing her only a 20-minute visit Tuesday.

During the visit, she said, she saw scratches across Gilmore’s hands and arms.

“If it’s God’s will, I’m going to turn this state upside down,” Scott said. “I’m the only parent this child has. I’m the only relative in this state other than her 14-year-old daughter. What would stop them from letting me see my daughter?”

Times staff writer Thao Hua contributed to this report.