Patterico's Pontifications

12/5/2007

The Littlest Hero

Filed under: Crime — DRJ @ 12:07 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Seven-year-old Alexis Goggins has overcome a lot in her brief life. Alexis is a special education student due to complications from a massive stroke suffered as an infant. Doctors said she would have trouble with tasks like writing, but despite that she has learned to write her name.

This weekend, Alexis, her mother Sieletha Parker, and family friend Aisha Ford were abducted by Calvin Tillie, her mother’s former boyfriend. Tillie shot Alexis’ mother in the head and arm, and Alexis is recovering in the hospital from six point-blank gunshot wounds she received trying to protect her mother:

“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.

Ford said she drove her burgundy 1998 Ford Expedition to Parker’s home on Dwyer. She said as Parker and Alexis walked up to her vehicle she saw a man on the porch, who she assumed was a furnace repairman. She said Alexis, who walks with a limp, slipped momentarily on the icy sidewalk and as she helped the girl up, she saw the man and recognized him as Tillie. 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. 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. Instead, Tillie gave her $10 and told her put in $5 worth of gas.

Ford said she dialed 911 on her cell phone as she walked into the station. “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.

“It was very scary. She (Ford) was scared and screaming when the guy was shooting. I was scared, too. I was on the phone talking to the police when he started shooting,” he said.

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.”

The officers said Tillie came out to the vehicle holding a blue steel 9 mm semi automatic and dropped the weapon when ordered to do so. Officers said they found Alexis huddled on the floor under the steering wheel, covered in blood, surrounded by spent cartridge casings, a spent bullet on the floor and teeth on the seat. There were bullet holes in the windshield and blood inside.”

Marvin Bodley, a Detroit public schools attendance agent who spent two days at Alexis’ bedside (kudos to him), described Alexis as a “courageous, courageous little girl” and added “You see more bandages than child,” he said. “It’s a horrific sight.”

Alexis is a special child and a real hero.

— DRJ

16 Responses to “The Littlest Hero”

  1. She’s already done more than some people will do their entire life.

    Ford said she dialed 911 on her cell phone as she walked into the station. “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.”

    Anyone else enraged by this part?

    Techie (ed20d9)

  2. Also, we put mad dogs down, don’t we? Fry the SOB.

    Techie (ed20d9)

  3. is there some way to make donations to help with the medical care of this poor little girl?

    sad (e457c4)

  4. Hooray for Alexis! And yes, Techie. Alas, it’s all I would expect from Detroit government.

    PatHMV (ca7f25)

  5. Any emergency dispatchers who can discuss the correct procedure for this situation (comment #1)? I would think that in a hostage situation, the nearest officers would be called from any non-emergency assignment.

    aunursa (1b5bad)

  6. First off, the operator that hung up ought to be fired IMMEDIATELY!!

    Second, The entire government of New Fallujah (Detroit) ought to be removed.

    What the H*LL are they trying to do in New Fallujah? Bring about RoboCop for real???

    PCD (09d6a8)

  7. That’s the Detroit PD for ya. It’s been promoting, and particularly choosing its senior policymakers, almost exclusively on race for almost 30 years now.

    There’s even a Supreme Court case about it, Detroit Police v. Young. It’s essentially a rollback of Bakke (bearing in mind that IANAL).

    There are many reasons that Detroit is at about half of its 1970 population, and one of them is that the police are so bad — despite lower ranks that generally mean well — that citizens of the city are not remotely safe. Detroit has lost a million inhabitants since 1950. Of those only about 400 a year or so have been are murdered, the rest just fled.

    The 911 hangup and indifference to a man-holding-hostages report (a call which would make most cops anywhere else scramble like thoroughbreds) are not a one-off in this case. They’re the norm.

    Example (2006):
    http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/8529161/detail.html
    http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/2006/04/lawsuit_planned.html

    Of course, you could also argue that Detroit is basically boiled down to those unable to move, and a larger population of thieves and thugs preying on them, Here’s a story about the prevalence of copper thieves, who boost your AC or even wiring in order to get the $2.50 a pound tubing or wiring inside.

    http://www.securityinfowatch.com/article/article.jsp?id=12191&siteSection=389

    One reason crime is going up, up, up, is politicians like this prosecutor, who’d fit right in here in the turn-em-loose ethics of Massachusetts law:

    http://www.detnews.com/2004/specialreport/0408/16/c01-243185.htm

    There are 5,000 arrests in Detroit for felon in possession of firearms or other gun charges, and she turns ’em loose as a matter of policy. Gee, who’s doing the murders? Certainly not these armed felons!

    And then there are THESE armed felons:
    http://media.www.michigandaily.com/media/storage/paper851/news/2004/01/21/News/Detroit.Cops.Plead.Guilty.To.Corruption.Face.Time.In.Prison-1421565.shtml
    http://detroit.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel07/de092607.htm (note: there are a bunch more FBI/DOJ press releases on Detroit Corruption cases, but the page has them listed by date and no titles, and all mixed in with the other routine felonies… happy hunting).
    http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/259/thisweekscorruption.shtml
    Yeah, most anti-drug-war types are just idle mom’s-basement dopers, but one thing they’re usefully ambitious about is collecting cop corruption anecdotes.
    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE1DE103EF931A25751C0A967958260
    (that last one’s from 1991, but the corrupt cop indicted is the CHIEF. He was found guilty of embezzling $2.6million: http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/mar96parenti.htm).

    I could go on, but I guess you get the point. The corrupt police chief was an ally of Mayor Coleman Young, the man that presided over the death of Detroit as a place where you could raise kids without undue risks of them being killed — or killing somebody.

    Detroit gets what Detroit votes in. This will all blow over until the next unanswered 911 crime outrage… which in its turn will blow over, too. Pity these victims hadn’t joined the million who left.

    Kevin R.C. O'Brien (8acbe1)

  8. The officers said Tillie came out to the vehicle holding a blue steel 9 mm semi automatic and dropped the weapon when ordered to do so.

    The one thing worse than a policeman who shoots when he shouldn’t is a policeman who doesn’t shoot when he should.

    nk (19e0fd)

  9. “The one thing worse than a policeman who shoots when he shouldn’t is a policeman who doesn’t shoot when he should.”

    Oh how very true! GAWD knows they kill enough innocents across the nation each year, how about cleaning up some real trash now and again instead of warehousing them forever?

    TC (1cf350)

  10. Detroit’s 911 service has had previous problems. The response in both these cases was disappointing but I’m not sure the police would have made a difference in Alexis’ case. It sounds like Tillie was determined to hurt someone.

    DRJ (a6fcd2)

  11. I’m not generally a praying man, but I am tonight.

    Uncle Pinky (3c2c13)

  12. but I’m not sure the police would have made a difference in Alexis’ case. It sounds like Tillie was determined to hurt someone.

    And yet he didn’t do so until Ford had pumped her $5 worth, delaying all she could, and then gone back to get some more. It sounds like this all took some time, enough for him to get impatient. Had the first 911 operator answered the call, and acted promptly, the police might have shown up before Tillie had a chance to do anything.

    Milhouse (f10fb3)

  13. You may be right, Milhouse, and I didn’t intend my comment to excuse the dispatchers’ poor handling of this call.

    DRJ (a6fcd2)

  14. I f__king despise Detroit and everything it is these days. This horrible, horrible story could have had a different outcome if it had a responsible government and police force. I am so happy to not have any family there anymore, and am so very sad for that little girl and her family. Shame on Detroit’s government and failing leaders. God save the people.

    xray (8cfb7a)

  15. Give the ex-boy freind life in prison or hang him from a tree

    krazy kagu (0a3548)


  16. How is this baby doing? anything new? My daughter Jessica was shot in march and has been quite concerned about this little girl.

    rhonda (f94d81)


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