Close your eyes and imagine that one week ago today you got the call that your beautiful, sweet daughter had been shot in the face. She’s dead. It is the nightmare from which no parent ever awakes. The police officers tell you what they believe happened in the minutes before your baby’s death and as they’re telling you the only thing running through your mind is rushing to her side, holding her in your arms and telling her it will be ok.
She was shot in the face by a homeowner. You want to vomit. Your daughter had been in a car accident and was disoriented, perhaps she had been drinking. Whatever it was, she knocked on the door of a home to ask for help, a phone to use, she was probably frightened. Maybe someone was following her. So she sought refuge at a random home and knocked. The homeowner answers, points a .12 shotgun at her face and it discharges.
He has not been arrested.
This is the true story of Renisha McBride and her family is rallying to have the man who shot her arrested. Why does this mother have to ask for justice? Beg for justice?
The facts we know: In the early morning hours of November 2nd, 2013, Renisha McBride hit a parked car. She had sustained some visible injuries and was bleeding. There was a woman at the scene who lived nearby and went inside her home to call 911, but McBride just kept repeating that she wanted to go home and she left. Some time later, she was four blocks from the accident scene and knocked on a door. The homeowner opened it and shot her. She was unarmed.
According to CBS, the homeowner’s lawyer is already poised for a public defense, “Cheryl Carpenter, the attorney representing the homeowner, told The Detroit News that the shooting was ‘justified.’ ‘I’m confident when the evidence comes it will show that my client was justified and acted as a reasonable person would who was in fear for his life,”‘ Carpenter said.”
“Justified?” Not one mother is going to like an attorney using that word for an unarmed woman simply looking for assistance. As moms, sisters, daughters, aunts, nieces, cousins and grandmothers, we’re tired of this kind of suggestion. The man who shot Renisha should be arrested. I don’t care if the gun got up walked to the door answered it and shot her itself. House+Gun+Stranger does not = free for all.
Do you know what would be going through my mind now? This would never happen to a white girl. If my baby were a white girl, this homeowner would be arrested. Do you disagree?
