Noticing the number of people visiting this blog via search engines seeking information on the Baby Antonio West case, I knew some new information must have been released. When I looked the case up, I learned that gun shot residue (GSR) found on the father's clothes has become a minor issue. More than likely the residue transferred to Luis Santiago's clothes when he met with the child's mother, Sherry West, after the baby's murder, West says.
"He was throwing things through the window and terrorizing me, saying that I killed my baby and it should have been me," said West.
This Brunswick, Georgia, case made national news in March after it was reported that two teen black males had shot 13-month-old Antonio West in the face and while the child was in his stroller. While the report was shocking and tragic, I immediately recalled the Susan Smith case in which a white mother blamed a mysterious black man for kidnapping her two young children. It turned out that she has killed them.
I did not want to believe that the two black boys had committed such a heinous act, and West did have the kind of history that indicated she may not have been telling the truth or may have been involved with the crime in some way. Later, however, evidence seemed to mount against the teens, and all I could say was "if they did it, they must be punished." All in all this case seems to be another tragedy involving people in poverty with untreated mental disorders and few opportunities to make their lives better.
Nonetheless, when this story broke, Robert Zimmerman, George Zimmerman's brother, used it as a hammer to strike out at black teens. He tweeted the equivalent of "all black teens are killers" with faulty logic asserting it's reasonable for people to think black people (all black people) are risky, and yet some people still think it's outrageous to call the Zimmermans "racists."
Apparently the police in Brunswick, Georgia, believe they have a very strong case against De'Marquise Elkins, the alleged shooter in the death of Baby Antonio, and the recently identified 15-year-old, Dominique Lang. The pair will be charged as adults, reports U.S. News on NBC.
Furthermore, Elkins has lost his alibi. His mother and aunt have been arrested for lying to the police:
Karima Aisha Elkins, 36, and Katrina Latrelle Elkins, 33, were booked on charges of making false statements to police and concealing facts or providing fraudulent documents in matters of government, Glynn County police said.
These women look troubled in their mug shots, and I mean that in the mental health sense. If it turns out that what Lang's mother told CNN is what her son actually told her and not what she hopes, then it would appear that Sherry West may also be telling the truth. Lang's mother told the news network that her son is a victim of Elkins's threats; he feared for his own life and was only a witness.
I stand by innocent until proven guilty. I hope we remember that family dysfunction and having relatives who will lie does not prove that a person is guilty of a specific crime. Such craziness merely identifies the accused as the product of dysfunction. Having a mother who will say whatever she can to protect you and even having been in trouble with the law before does not mean a person accused of a crime committed the specific crime of which he or she's been accused. And even when considering a person's criminal record, the types of past crimes are a factor as well. Does Elkins have a history of committing violent crimes?
But again, if the boys did it, they should be punished.
I must address another issue here. Someone on Twitter said to me, "This has nothing to do with race. Don't make it into that. It is about a little baby murdered."
It's true that the murder itself is "not about race," but the aftermath naturally touches on race. The history of African-Americans in Southern states and the criminal justice system makes that so, and this is one of the reasons we must be careful now.
Unless we can resurrect Baby Antonio, there's nothing left for the people to do but see that justice is served, to actively seek the facts and truth about what happened. Is justice served when people are thrown into prison without considering the source of accusations against them? Really?
Also, can I "make" something about race that does not already involve the constructs of race? Whenever anyone tells me that race is not a factor, a warning light goes off in my head. For that person on Twitter, this criminal incident may have nothing to do with race. She may be so upset at the idea that a baby was murdered that she can't think about anything else. However, she can't speak for others out there who assumed the teens were guilty simply on the mother's say-so because the teens are black.
Those people, people like George Zimmerman's brother Robert, would gladly point to statistics and launch a sweep of black teens into prison. His brother went into a racist rant on Twitter following the news that Sherry West had identified two black teens as the perpetrators. So, why don't these people who say "don't make this about race" write to Robert Zimmerman Jr.?
And why do such people refuse to examine West's story? Where are the forensics on this case? Has a gun been recovered? Did the police find blood on the Elkins boy's shirt, gun powder on his hands? What was the motive behind shooting the baby, and why didn't the alleged shooter also shoot West since she could identify him? Not enough people are asking these kinds of questions because many in the public assume that if some wooly-headed black boys from troubled homes have been accused and arrested, they must be guilty.
But I say the principle of innocent until proven guilty stands to protect most those people who are most likely to face discrimination in the court of public opinion and the actual courtroom. It is not reserved only for the angelic-looking, wealthy, and previously-trouble-free citizens among us.
Still, I'll assert the following one more time for the hard of hearing and slow to comprehend: Killing an innocent baby is a horrific crime. If the boys did this, they must be punished. And yet I must ask, why do some people have trouble with the word if?
Read the latest on this case at this blog at this link.
UPDATES, March 2013: Evidence is mounting against the boys, Elkins and the now-identified 15-year-old Dominique Lang. While Sherry West's story seems off (perhaps due to her alleged mental illnesses), it's starting to look as though she's telling the truth. A gun's been recovered. Read more here.
Today, someone left a link in comments on my post "Baby Shot in Stroller, 2013: Echoes of Susan Smith, 1994" that directs readers to a new element in the Baby Antonio murder case. The story at the link raises more questions about the baby's mother, Sherry West. In the video below, West's daughter, Ashley Glassey, tells a Brunswick, Georgia, television reporter that "she does not want to falsely accuse anyone but she wants the truth."
According to this KSDK story, West lost custody of Glassey when the young woman was eight years old, but Glassey says she has forgiven her mother for whatever took place back then. Nonetheless, she also says that her mother, West, suffers from bipolar disorder with "schizophrenic tendencies." Glassey says that she has been suspicious about the circumstances of Baby Antonio's death since her mother first called her and told her that the 13-month-old had been killed. At that time, Glassey says West changed details about the shooting, saying that the baby was shot first not West as West has since told the media, and shortly after speaking of the murder, West asked how soon did Glassey think the insurance company would pay benefits.
Having dealt with two deaths in my family last year, I consider that it's possible that West wondered about the baby's life insurance benefits because she needed that money to pay funeral expenses. However, as I noted in my second post about the Baby Antonio case, West had his body cremated shortly after his death; therefore, funeral expenses should not have been significant.
Furthermore, in West early interviews, she seemed to me to be very focused on moving back to New Jersey, which made me think that she may have been thinking about moving away from Baby Antonio's father, Luis Santiago, before the baby was killed. As I noted yesterday, an AJC article indicates that Santiago seemed more angry at West when he was notified of the baby's death than he appeared to be angry at the boys she accused: he blamed West for the baby's death.
I also wrote in that post yesterday that West's son Shaun Glassey, who was stabbed to death in New Jersey in 2008, was not the innocent victim of a crime as West represents him in the media. Another boy stabbed her son in self-defense when Shaun Glassey and other teens jumped the boy.
If West has a mental disorder and was the victim of a crime in which she witnessed the shooting of her baby, then this story is even sadder for her. A person can only take so much. But it's equally possible that this story is another kind of tragedy. It's possible that West saw De'Marquise Elkins someplace else, harmed her own baby, couldn't deal with what she'd done, and then hallucinated or invented the story she's told police and the press. I hope the Brunswick police know what they're doing because they quickly arrested the accused boys based on West's story and identification.
Just as West's daughter does not want to accuse her of anything, I also am reluctant to point a finger at her because no one wants to bring more heartache to a grieving mother. West is innocent until proven otherwise. But so are those boys.
I hope people will be careful not to demonize the two teen boys who've been arrested based on the accusations of an unstable woman. And I especially hope that people will not be sucked into the propaganda readily constructed by racists commenting on this crime and who seek to capitalize on this tragedy for the sake of their political agenda.
It's horrible, for instance, that George Zimmerman's brother, Robert Zimmerman Jr, took to Twitter recently calling black teens "killers." He readily assumed that the boys are guilty, did not question Sherry West's strange story at all, and then he equated Trayvon Martin with alleged shooter De'Marquise Elkins. (But Trayvon Martin did not have the gun; George Zimmerman did.) Obviously, the man has an agenda for which he will gladly sacrifice every black teen to achieve. This is just more of the blood lust we Americans must work to avoid.
In the Baby Antonio case, more than ever, we need to be careful to not rush to judgement. It's possible the boys committed this horrible crime, but it's also quite possible that West invented her story accusing them. Either way, a baby is dead, and with no other witnesses and an awareness that West may not be as credible as people have assumed, her version of how her son died needs to be examined.
Updated 3/26/13, 11:00 PM: Police have recovered a gun in the case and Elkins alibi has been derailed. His mother and aunt have been arrested for lying to the police.
In the CNN video posted below, Sherry West, the mother of 13-month-old Baby Antonio, who was shot in the face in Brunswick, Georgia, last week, tells how her first son, Shaun Glassey, also died a violent death.
Glassey was stabbed to death with a steak knife in New Jersey in 2008 when he was 18 years old. However, he was not an innocent victim, according to police. He was part of a group of teens who ambushed a 17-year-old. The boy who stabbed Glassey was acting in self-defense and not just some evil person who took her older son away as West has intimated in interviews.
She says on the video that she's afraid to have children again, and the CNN reporter says that she's paranoid and understandably fearful.
You will also see in the video below the back of the unidentified 15-year-old who was allegedly involved with the crime. He stands before a judge wearing a prison orange jumpsuit and chains. He and the alleged shooter, De'Marquise Elkins, have been charged with murder and neither has entered a plea. Elkins, 17, allegedly shot twice at West, grazing her ear and wounding her in the leg, and then shot the baby, who was in his stroller, while the younger boy stood by and watched.
Already the families of the two boys have been pitted against each other. The mother of the younger boy says that her son only witnessed the crime and is himself a victim of Elkins's alleged actions, and Elkins's family members say he wasn't present when the baby was shot. The families say that the boys don't even know each other. Although, I do wonder what the 15-year-old told his mother. Her comment suggests that she believes Elkins is guilty.
I have learned from commenters on my previous post about this crime and also from the Atlanta Journal Constitution that West has already packed up some of the the baby's clothing and other belongings to give away. Furthermore, the AJC reports that his body was immediately cremated because West didn't want to see his little body "in a box." The last time she saw Baby Antonio, according the AJC, paramedics were taking his body away in an ambulance.
The AJC article has details not mentioned in the CNN stories that I've read. For instance, according to AJC, the alleged shooter Elkins had a Facebook page that the paper says has been removed from the social media site. On his Facebook page, he allegedly bragged that "he and his friends would 'turn your neighborhood into a murder scene.'" I don't know whether the AJC's reporter is merely reporting what she read at Mediate or reporting something she was able to confirm herself. We live in an age of mainstream media outlets compiling reports from other websites, hearsay everywhere. Where's the screenshot at least?
The AJC story also reports that the baby's father, Luis Santiago, blames West for the baby's death:
Luis Santiago, who was arrested and jailed briefly after the shooting when his grief overwhelmed him and he began screaming at West, blaming her for their son’s death.
“I’m not upset with the boys,” Santiago said Saturday of the two teenagers charged with killing his son. “They didn’t have a good upbringing.”
He has lots of questions, but they are mostly for West. “Why did you go that way?” Santiago asked. He said he frequently told her to take another route when she walked their son in a neighborhood that has public housing projects on each end of the street.
Does he blame West? “Hell, yes, I do,” Santiago said.
This sounds damning and a cruel thing to say to the mother of your child, but people react to death in strange ways. West was near Santiago and the boys were not, so perhaps she received the brunt of his anger. Nonetheless, and however the baby was shot, the emerging snippets about the case are frightening and bizarre. I wonder what the parents' relationship was like before this tragedy.
As I have already written at this blog, this real nightmare reminds me of the Susan Smith case of 1994; however, I know that people grieve and react to trauma differently. I don't want to believe West's version of what happened to Baby Antonio nor do I want to believe a scenario implied when I think of Susan Smith.
I don't want to believe that two black males, teens, committed this heinous crime, but sadly I cannot rule out that it's possible Elkins is guilty. I have repeatedly lamented at The Urban Mother's Book of Prayers the devaluation of human life among some young people in the black community; however, most often they kill each other, and the death rate takes its toll. And if it's not gang-related, then it's sadly probably another case domestic violence.
The high rate of shootings in my city, New Orleans, and other urban areas takes a toll on families and the entire city. Sometimes innocent bystanders are shot, as we saw last year here through a gruesome birthday party shooting. (See also the shooting death of Haydia Pendleton in Chicago and the death of Baby Jonyla that I mentioned in my earlier post about Baby Antonio.) The more common scenario, however, is that the victim and the killer know each other as was the case in 2009 when little Ja'shawn Powell's father slit his throat but reported him as kidnapped. Ja'Shawn's father didn't want to pay child support, and he wanted the child's mother to suffer as well.
Recalling that increasing gun violence in urban areas usually happens between people who know each other is the only knowledge that lets some of us get to sleep at night. We think that if we don't know people in gang culture or don't live near people in that lifestyle and if we are not in families with histories of domestic violence, then we're unlikely to die a violent death or lose a child to gunfire. But then we hear stories like Baby Antonio's and we think again. If Elkins really shot that baby, then we don't sleep as easily.
For many of us of any race and in many ways, it would be less terrifying to believe that someone who knew Baby Antonio killed him. And for many of us in the black community, believing someone who knew the baby killed the baby would be more comforting because we do not want to hear more stories about black dysfunction or deal with people who can't distinguish criminal elements in our community from our entire community.
But whether we are black, brown or white, if it turns out to be true that these boys committed this heinous act, then this violence, through its supposed randomness, has crept closer to us all. And regardless of the age of the victim, regardless of race, random violence is another sign of societal dysfunction, of potential chaos, something no sane person ever wants to face.
What a horrific story, "Baby Shot Dead in Stroller"! On the video later in this post, you will see Sherry West, the mother of a 13-month old boy in Brunswick, Georgia, who was shot in the face and died instantly. West says that Baby Antonio was shot by two young black males (ages 14 and 17).
Sadly, it's possible that it happened just as the mother said it did, and yes, yes, I'm outraged and sad. If the boys did what West claims, they must be punished. But as you many have already guessed by my use of the word if, I'm not yet sure that these boys should be the target of anyone's outrage yet. These boys, though they definitely are real and not phantoms, may merely be serving in the mother's story as the mysterious black man.
Oh, no! You may be thinking that this black blogger is horrible. How can that blogger possibly suggest that the mother would make up such a horrific story about her baby? Surely a mother would not make up trying to give her baby CPR at a blue house on the corner after he'd been brutally shot in the face? How can that blogger doubt the poor woman?
I'll tell you how: Susan Smith, South Carolina, 1994.
In 1994, Susan Smith, a white woman who seemed much more genuinely distraught than West does in the video below, went crying before television cameras pleading for the return of her two young children. She claimed that a black man had abducted them, but it turned out that Susan Smith was lying. She had killed her own children; she had locked them in their car seats and rolled her car into a South Carolina lake. Then she blamed who she thought would be a believable suspect, the mysterious black man.
The sheriff in Susan Smith's case, a white man, played along, but in reality, he doubted her story from the beginning, and so did I back then.
Chief Tobe Green of the Brunswick Police Department said that Demarquis Elkins, 17, and a 14-year-old unidentified suspect whose name has been withheld because of his age, were arrested early this morning in connection with the baby's death, and both have been charged with first-degree murder.
I don't know whether Brunswick's Sheriff Tobe Green (a black man) doubts West's story. He may be inclined to believer her since times have changed since 1994. Almost every time you turn on local evening news in some cities, it seems that a black male pops up who's been involved with a shooting. So, it may be more difficult these days for some police officers to think of young black males as innocent until proven guilty. But I hope the law enforcement officers in this case will also recall that young black males are most often shooting each other, not white women and their babies.
Green is also in a different power dynamic than the South Carolina sheriff was. It may be more difficult for a black sheriff in a southern town to launch a full investigation that challenges the story of a white mother. I'm not saying that it is more difficult, but that it may be.
Another factor that comes to my mind is that Brunswick, Georgia, is not Chicago or New Orleans or Philadelphia or Camden, New Jersey. Brunswick, Georgia, is a small town. Is it possible that West has seen these young men elsewhere? Is it possible that these boys, who may be known trouble makers in town, are only guilty of skipping school that day?
Also, here's a good question that one of my friends asked on Facebook when I said this story reminds me of the Susan Smith tragedy: "There is something strange about a mother talking that way, with that level of organized detail, after she supposedly saw her baby shot in the head. CPR? And why would they be cold-blooded enough to shoot a baby but not kill the only witness to their deed? A lot of this doesn't make sense."
Another friend commented, "Sooooo much detail voluntarily at this time of grief, looking down as she tells the story."
West's story seems even stranger for another reason: its timing. What a coincidence that this crime happened so soon after a Chicago story about another baby being shot by black males "while her dad was changing her diaper." As it turns out, the diaper change part of that tragedy is not true, and already the police are turning back on the father suggesting he has gang ties. Either way, a baby is dead.
But I cannot dismiss all the media attention that the Chicago story received and that Ms. West, like so many others, must have heard the story, too. She may have heard the story, as many others have, and sensed the outrage and recognized the sympathy directed at Baby Jonyla's parents. Baby Jonyla is the 6-month-old pictured at the left.
Whether I'm very wrong here or very right, I do not know. Either way, another baby is dead.
Lest anyone think I'm having these thoughts simply because I am black, I'll point out that I'm not the only person who thinks of Susan Smith as they hear about little Antonio's death. Others, both black and white, who recall the Smith case have been thinking that the West tragedy feels strangely familiar as you can see at this forum discussion. Also, in the video below from the Brunswick police department's press conference before the arrest of the boys, I get the sense that not everyone in that town buys the mother's story.
The rumors are flying, one official indicates in the video, and we are all very very sad. Whatever the facts turn out to be in this case, our society has a tragedy to work through: Another baby is dead.
