What a story.
As the gunman was about to open fire, 7-year-old Alexis Goggins lunged from the back seat of the SUV and threw herself across her mom, crying, "Don’t hurt my mother!"
Six bullets from the 9 mm handgun slammed into Alexis, one piercing her right eye. Two slugs hit her mother.
Alexis’ mother pulled through. But two weeks later, Alexis lies in critical condition, blind in one eye. And to her classmates and many people in this city so depressingly familiar with violence, the little girl is a hero.
"She was trying to save me," her mother, Seliethia Parker, 30, told The Associated Press on Monday. "My baby is just an angel to her mother. I thought as the mother, I’d be saving my child. I never thought my daughter would be saving me."
“Alexis is learning-disabled and lags behind other youngsters her age. As a result, police say it may never be known whether Alexis meant to shield her mother from the bullets with her body.”
WTF?
I may be seeing prejudice here where it doesn’t exist, but she threw herself from the rear seat to in front of her mother. Seems to me her intentions were pretty clear.
Of course, she’s learning-disabled. And who knows what kind of screwy things go thru their heads.
God!
I don’t know what it was about the headline you used, Oliver, but somehow I was hoping the story had a happier ending that made it so newsworthy–like the gunman’s conscience getting the better of him due to such a display of bravery.
Maybe it’s just a sign of the sick sad world we live in that a story of a child trying to save her mother from gunfire only reminds me that there are people who willingly shoot children.
Jay? Jay Tea?
Aren’t you going to tell us how this all could have been prevented if the 7-year-old had been carrying a gun?