A late comment on Alexis Goggins

It took several days for non-local media to pick up this story back in December, and I doubt it would have made it to news outlets outside Detroit had it not been for the noise made by the African-American and feminist blogosphere. Alexis Goggins, a seven-year-old special-needs child, was shot six times trying to protect her mother from the mother's abusive ex-boyfriend (against whom the mother, Selietha Parker, had taken out a restraining order). You'd think this would be picked up instantly as the tragic and horrifying human-interest story that it is, but Alexis is a poor black kid in Detroit, and, well, those of us who follow the news media know how this song goes.

Some of the more thoughtless commentaries I've seen relating to this crime have suggested that Ms. Parker is an unfit parent for a) having become involved with an abusive man and/or b) being too poor to pay her heating bill. (I'd rather not link to these--mostly comment threads on other blogs or on online news stories, which you can find in a few seconds on Google if you want to subject yourself to them--but this blogger notes a few, and notes the emphasis in the Fox News version of the story on the shooter being Parker's "ex-boyfriend".) I don't think I've read a good word about any adult in this story, and I think it's a notable omission. I want to go over the sequence of events again with an eye to tracking everyone in the incident (readers who have small children, proceed with caution; this is pretty awful).

The drama began to unfold just before midnight Saturday, when Parker called Ford and asked if she and Alexis could spend the night at Ford’s home.

“She said she had no heat and they were very cold, and I said , sure I’ll come and get you,” Ford said.

Incidentally, while it doesn't speak to Parker's moral character or parenting skills either way, the heat thing strikes me as the sort of thing you say on the phone when you don't feel at liberty to say, "My abusive ex-boyfriend is on his way/standing right here. Please get me away from this house right now."

Ford drove over to pick them up and Calvin Tillie, the shooter, was there.

He was holding a gun.

Tillie ordered them into the vehicle, cursed at the women and angrily told Ford to drive him to Six Mile Road, she said.

“He looked like he was enraged and didn’t care what he did. I knew if we went to Six Mile, he would kill us,” Ford said.

This is the kind of risk assessment we all hope we'll never have to use, but it seems to me that by not doing what the man with the gun told her to, Ford made the smartest choice she could.

Instead, she told him she needed gas and drove to the Fast Stop Gas station in the 5000 block of East Seven Mile Road, a station that requires customers to pay the attendant inside.

“I figured if he got out to pump the gas, I was going to take off,” Ford said.

Ford stayed in a populated area, instead of following the attacker's instructions, and had a plan for ditching him. It didn't work--Tillie wouldn't get out of the car, so Ford dialed 911 from her cell phone as she went to buy the gas.

“The first operator clicked off and I dialed again and told that operator a guy with a gun was holding me hostage with a mother and baby and threatening to kill us. I told her the name of the gas station and then she said they didn’t have a unit to send.”

Ford said she paid for $5 of gas and slowly returned to the vehicle, stalling for time as she handed Tillie the change. She said she kept stopping and starting the pump, hoping the police would show up.

“I told him I needed more gas and took money out of my purse and went back into the station,” she said. The attendant, Mohammad Alghazali, 30, said he noticed Ford was crying and she told him what was happening. He called 911 as he heard shots coming from the vehicle.

We're now on our third 911 call of the incident, and apparently it was this last call that produced a police response (a later paragraph says, "Alghazali said a police car on a street nearby arrived in less than a minute after his call").

Parker told police that Tillie said Ford was taking too long

She said she pleaded with him but he pointed the gun at her and shot her in the side of the head. She told police she was shot in the arm as she lunged at Tillie.

Before Tillie could fire again, Alexis jumped over the seat between her mother and the gunman and begged him not to shoot her mother.

The police report said Tillie “without hesitation” pumped six shots into the child.

As police arrived, they saw Parker, covered in blood, running from the truck, screaming, “He just shot my baby.”

This is a lot of brutal action in a few short paragraphs. The gas station attendant calls 911 and finally convinces the damn police to come. Parker grapples with the gunman to protect her child and herself, and is wounded twice. While Parker is knocked back momentarily by a gunshot, the child puts herself bodily between her mother and the gun and is shot six times. Parker (who has, remember, been shot in the head) apparently sees that the police are coming and runs for their help; if she'd tried to move Alexis instead, she'd probably have caused her even more serious injury.

It's already been noted that Alexis Goggins's actions were stunningly heroic. I would further suggest that all three women in this story ought to get some kind of Gavin de Becker Award for quick thinking and bold action to protect their own lives and others' under extreme pressure. Of course, they went through this ordeal while poor and black, so I don't imagine that my opinion on that matter will be a widely expressed one.

There's a fund in Goggins's name for those who would like to offer support (or simply send cards) during what is sure to be a long and difficult recovery. (I find no reports on her condition since mid-December, and would appreciate seeing any more recent news updates that anyone may have spotted.)