This dude shot – em, 5-year-old boy calmly describes his parents – killing to nine hundred eleven dispatcher – The Washington Post
‘This dude shot 'em,' 5-year-old boy calmly describes his parents' killing to nine hundred eleven dispatcher
The inwards track on Washington politics.
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Police looking for suspects who killed George Dillard/Lakita Hicks in front of their child https://t.co/WuSzmUiIcq pic.twitter.com/YQDSRn2CFa
Inbetween recurrent gang violence and last summer’s shooting rampage by a lone gunman, police in Chattanooga, Tenn., have fielded some brutal nine hundred eleven calls in the past year.
Perhaps none as painful, however, as the call they received late Sunday night from a 5-year-old boy.
“My daddy and my mama got shot,” the boy said calmly.
His blunt statement seemed to catch the dispatcher off guard.
“You said your brother and your mama is doing what?” she asked.
“My mama and my daddy got shot,” the boy repeated.
“They’re fighting?” the dispatcher asked.
“No,” he answered. “This dude shot ’em.”
The call is subdued and also heartbreaking. The boy is too youthful to know his address, and yet here he is having to give a statement about how his parents were just killed in front of his eyes.
After the boy was able to help police locate his house, officers arrived to find George Dillard, 24, and Lakita Hicks, 25, dead inwards. The boy, whose name has not been released, was unharmed, according to News Channel 9.
As devastating as the call is for the boy and his family, it is also a testament to the city’s continuing fight with gang violence.
Albeit Chattanooga police have not said whether the shooting was gang-related, they did confirm that Dillard was a gang member. According to the Times Free Press, he belonged to the fifty two Bloodstone Villains.
The dual homicide goes after a spate of latest shootings with suspected gang ties. On Jan. 25, less than a week earlier, Thomas Simmons, 20, was fatally shot while walking on the street. Police have called the killing gang-related and said they are investigating whether it is connected to Sunday’s shooting, the Times Free Press reported. Two other people also were victims of a drive-by shooting over the weekend, albeit both survived.
The city has waged a high-profile campaign to combat gang violence in latest years. On Friday, Chattanooga police posted to Facebook a warning to gang members that they were looking for Simmons’s killer.
Please S H A R E – Help us put gangs on notice. If you are a member of gang we are looking at you. And we are looking…
“A man was cruelly murdered in broad daylight in our community,” Police Chief Fred Fletcher said in the movie. “We have credible information that gang members perpetrated this heinous act of violence. … Let me be very, very clear about this. If you are part of a gang or a group that intends to harm our community, we are looking at you and we are looking for you. You can make the choice to stop this violence, or we can make you stop the violence.”
Three days later, however, Fletcher was commenting on yet another killing.
“We have dual concerns here,” he told News Channel 9, “finding the people who committed this atrocious act of violence and making sure we help the people who have survived it and are affected by it.”
At this point, the boy’s witness account is all the police have to go on. No suspects have been arrested.
Home where dual homicide happened is a duplex. Man who lives in other side was out of town when shooting happened pic.twitter.com/2Ea6uYTxM6
“Where were you” when the shooting happened, the dispatcher asked the boy during the nine hundred eleven call.
“Um, I was still at home and I began howling,” he said.
“So there’s nobody there with you?” the dispatcher asked.
“No,” the boy answered before pleading, “can you tell the police officers to come?”
When the dispatcher asked what happened, the boy said that his parents were “in the back yard but a dude shot them.
“But now he gone,” the boy said, adding that he was now watching television.
Then the dispatcher asks about his parents.
“Are they talking to you?”
“No,” he answers. “They dead.”
“You said both of them?” the dispatcher asks.
“Uh huh,” he says. “And I’m by myself.”
Lakita Hicks’s uncle said that the boy is no longer alone.
“He is with family now,” Eric Terry Sr. told News Channel 9. “He’s doing pretty good, strong lil’ dude.”