Marina Trahan Martinez
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — Shetamia Taylor wanted her four sons to experience a peaceful march. That’s why she had brought them to downtown Dallas on Thursday to take part in the Black Lives Matter protest.
They were headed to their car to beat the traffic back to their home in Garland and were about to cross the street near Belo Garden when the shooting began.
First one shot, then a second. Wounded and falling to the ground, a tall, hefty, white police officer yelled: “He has a gun. Run!” The crowd scattered. In the pandemonium, Taylor told her sons to run ahead of her.
The 38-year-old mother, one of two civilians injured in last week’s shooting, recounted the terror she and her sons felt at a tearful press conference at Baylor University Medical Center on Sunday.
She felt something tear through the back of her right calf and exit her shin. A bullet. Her son, Andrew, turned around to grab her. She tackled him. They lay between a parked car and the street curb. An officer jumped on mother and son.
“There was another [officer] at our feet, and another over our head,” she recalled. “Several of them lined against a wall and stayed there with us.”
She remembered mostly white officers protecting her and Andrew.
More shots, and another officer fell.
“I’d never been in a situation like that before,” she said. “It was just hundreds of rounds. I’ve never heard anything like that before. It was just shots all around.”
As the shooting continued, Andrew, 15, lifted his head. Taylor pushed him back down. She didn’t want him to see her bleeding.
She watched her son, Kavion, 18, grab her 12-year-old, Jermar. The two brothers sought protection near the entryway of a parking garage. An officer yelled at Kavion: “Go! I’ll cover you!” The boys followed the crowd toward Union Station.
Taylor’s fourth son, Jajuan, 14, had followed his mother’s orders: To run. He became separated from his family. On the street, he sought the help of a stranger with her family. He asked her what to do.
“Just get to safety,” the woman said.
“Can I come with you?” Jajuan asked. “I don’t know Dallas.”
The woman’s name was Angie Wisner. The Oak Cliff woman was with her cousin’s wife and their three kids. They and Jajuan managed to stay at the apartment of a Good Samaritan, near Main and Field.
There, Jajuan stayed until a cousin picked him up.
Near Belo Garden, police officers put Taylor and Andrew into a police car riddled with bullets. The tires were flat, down to the rims. They sped toward Baylor. At the ER, Taylor saw a fallen officer being carried in on a gurney.
“I kept praying for everybody,” she recalled, “for my sons to be safe, for the officers to be safe.”
Kavion and Jermar found shelter at Union Station. They borrowed a phone and called their mother’s cell phone. They reached Andrew, who told them their mother had been shot. Kavion tried to stay calm for the sake of his younger brother.
At Union Station, the brothers heard that the gunman might be headed their way. Everyone moved quickly through a tunnel to the Hyatt Regency. The brothers stayed there for several hours.
At Baylor, around 1 a.m. Friday morning, doctors and nurses prepared Taylor for surgery.
Hours later, she was reunited with her four sons. It will take four to five months for her to recover from her injury.
“I’m celebrating my kids and I’m thankful that I’m OK, but somebody’s dad, [somebody’s] husband isn’t,” she said. “It hurts. I’m frustrated. I’m angry. Why would [the shooter] do that?... I’m just a mother and a wife. I’m not an activist or a politician...But I’m not gonna stop. I want my community to be unified.”
She sobbed as she reflected on the five Dallas police officers who had lost their lives.
“I’m so thankful for the Dallas Police Department,” she said. “They had no regard for their own life. They stayed there with us... I’ve never seen anything like that. The way they just came around us and guarded us like that.”
Copyright 2016 The Dallas Morning News