A 7-year-old-girl is being hailed as an “angel from heaven” and a hero for jumping in front of an enraged gunman, who pumped six bullets into the child as she used her body as a shield to save her mother’s life.
Alexis Goggins, a first-grader at Campbell Elementary School, is in stable condition at Children’s Hospital in Detroit recovering from gunshot wounds to the eye, left temple, chin, cheek, chest and right arm.
“She is an angel from heaven,” said Aisha Ford, a family friend for 15 years who also was caught up in the evening of terror.
The girl’s mother, Selietha Parker, 30, was shot in the left side of her head and her bicep by a former boyfriend, who police said was trying to kill Parker. The gunman was disarmed by police and arrested at the scene of the shooting, a Detroit gas station. Police identified him as Calvin Tillie, 29, a four-time convicted felon whom Parker had dated for six months.
Sylvia has more — especially about the police ineffectiveness.
The mainstream media isn’t giving this story its due, and so bloggers are trying to get the word out and raise money for the family. What About Our Daughers? has contact information for major media outlets — let them know you want to see this story covered. And if you want to give to the family:
Checks should be made out to the Alexis Goggins Hero Fund and sent to Campbell Elementary School in care of the Alexis Goggins Hero Fund, 2301 E Alexandrine St, Detroit, 48207. For information, call (313) 494-2052.
Also, Digg it and comment.
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- “There must be violence against women.” by Jill January 4, 2008
WTFFis the world coming to??
WTFF is it in men that makes them think that women are still property?
WTFF is it in women that they don’t recognize these men for who they are?
My friend nearly died at the hands of her boyfriend and I still don’t understand wth was going through her mind during their relationship (although she did tell me that it was only as he was sitting on her chest, hands around her neck, choking her, that she realized she didn’t love him any more…)…
Please, can someone explain this to me?
Many things can be going throw an abuse victim’s mind, Orodemniades:
I deserve this, this is how all relationships are, I can’t do any better, I don’t want to be alone, I love him, I have nowhere to go, my family will think I’m a failure if I don’t make this work, I won’t be able to support my kids without him . . . and I’m afraid he might try to shoot me to death if I leave. [For the record, it's a very sadly valid fear: abusive men are more likely to kill or attempt to kill a woman who has left him than a woman who is still in the relationship.]
The only part you really need to understand though is that the abuser is the one always at fault, and his are the motivations we need to be questioning. Not the victim’s.
Oh yeah, the more we (friends and family) found out about him, the more befuddled we became. However, in this instance, it is clear that my friend’s…issues…clearly stem from her family. Let’s just say that as the second child, and lacking a penis and the firstborn, she is not, uh, valued the way most people would think a child should be valued.
cough
Yeah, that’s it.
When I read this article, all I got was a man shot his girlfriend then shot a 7 year old girl who tried to stop him. What a beautifully brave little girl.
What in the hell else is there to say?
And thank you, Cara. It’s the abuser at fault, not the victim’s.
Hopefully, the family will be living in a mansion after they sue the ass off that piece of shit 911 operator.
But… there’s something fishy here. A pointblank 9mm bullet would go right through a kid’s body. In other words, if the kid was between the mother and the gun, all six bullets — assuming they didn’t ricochet off of bone — would still have hit the mother. There are more facts to come out. This story isn’t over.
Yes, Mike, I’m sure a seven-year-old is lying about being shot. Jesus.
Which is exactly what I meant. Buddha.
I don’t get the Buddha reference (was Buddha psychic?).
Sorry if I’m misinterpreting you. Please keep in mind that this is a feminist blog, and that nearly every time we post on some act of violence befalling a woman or girl, some dude pops up in the comments to posit that it’s just an alleged crime and she might be lying so we should all withhold judgment. If that wasn’t your point, then I apologize.
No, I fully believe that the guy shot the two of them. It’s the details that are strange.
And the Buddha thing was snark. You said Christ, I said Buddha.
I got the same sense, Jill, on both counts.
Ya know, you’d think people would applaud that a seven year would be that heroic and protective. But I got a fair different sense from some of those comments on that article.
That’s why I only posted what I said in my first post. I hadn’t the words for what others were saying. Still don’t have them.
“But… there’s something fishy here. A pointblank 9mm bullet would go right through a kid’s body. In other words, if the kid was between the mother and the gun, all six bullets — assuming they didn’t ricochet off of bone — would still have hit the mother. There are more facts to come out. This story isn’t over.”
You know, I spent all of a minute thinking about this, and seriously?
A) It’s very difficult to tell what a bullet is necessarily going to do once it hits something as inconsistent in density as a human body.
B) Since most of the bullets appear to have struck her in the head without killing her or leaving her in extremely critical condition, it seems to be a reasonable assumption, just from reading the quoted part in the post, that many if not all of the bullets did in fact ricochet off bone. The update in the linked post says the little girl needed pins in the wounded arm, so it sounds like that bullet struck bone as well.
C) It’s also hardly a given that a bullet that had originally been on target to hit the mother would have been on the same trajectory upon exit (see A).
D) This is before we get to the possibility of a bullet which would have gone stray striking the child as she went to defend her mother.
The fact that the mom needed to go back to the emergency room for treatment of the arm that still had a bullet in it after sitting up with her daughter in the hospital makes me wonder what kind of monster medical bills the family is going to be facing after this.
I read the comments solely to say, “Jesus Christ. That poor baby.”
And then there’s this:
For heaven’s sake, Mike. What the hell ARE you trying to say? If you have forensics expertise there must be some REASON for you to comment about the shots, some conclusion you think should be drawn.