Mother Shot By Dallas Shooter Describes Her Battle to Save Her Sons

Shetamia Taylor and her four teenage sons attended the march in Dallas after the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile to peacefully protest the police violence that killed them. When gunfire rang out, Taylor herself took a bullet while protecting her son.

“I was just laying on top of him,” Taylor said about protecting her 15-year-old at a press conference, reports the Los Angeles Times. “If it was going to happen to one of my sons, it was going to happen to me first.”

The group of five was separated in the chaos, with police helping two sons run to safety and a third son fleeing and receiving help from another woman. Meanwhile, Taylor felt a bullet hit her right calf and pushed her son to the ground to protect him with her body.

“I’m just a mother and a wife,” she said at the conference at Baylor University Medical Center. “I’m not an activist. I’m not a politician. I just want to protect my family.” Taylor also said her youngest son wants to be a police officer when he grows up, and she thanked Dallas police for protecting her family during the shooting.

[LA Times]