A mother shot during the attack on police officers in Dallas said of the officers, “They were really heroes for us.” Shetamia Taylor said during an emotional press conference that the officers saved her life and the lives of her sons.
Taylor was surrounded by her sons and other members of her family during the presser at the Baylor University Medical Center on Sunday.
She started her address to the media and others gathered, “First and foremost, I want to say my prayers to the family members of the officers who passed. I want to say thank you to the officers who were there for me and my sons, who watched over us during that time.”
Her comments began about the 16-minute mark in this YouTube video.
Taylor said she wanted to say thank you and that she was sorry. Ms. Taylor said the officers saved her life, her sons lives, “all of them,” she added. She called the attacker “selfish” for affecting the lives of her family and others who will have to deal with the aftermath of living through such an attack and mentioned the mental, emotional, and physical, turmoil they will have to live with.
They were about to go back to where her car was parked when they heard the shots. She was obviously emotionally affected while she recapped what happened that night. She said she remembered seeing a “tall” “hefty” “white guy” “bald” officer. She heard a second shot, “and as he was going down,” the officer told her, “He has a gun, Run.” Ms. Taylor had to stop while she was telling the story to compose herself. This happens at about the 21-minute mark in the video.
“My kids started running,” she said. Ms. Taylor wanted to make sure her sons were all in front of her. She was running behind them when she felt the bullet hit her in the back of the leg. She grabbed her son Andrew and got on top of him. Police officers started coming up the block.
“That officer jumped on top of me, and covered me, and my son,” she tearfully relayed. “There was another one at our feet, and there was another one over our head. And there were several of them lined against the wall over there and they just stayed there with us.”
She broke down when she said, “I saw another officer, I saw another officer get shot, right in front of me, and there were two.” Taylor had to take a few moments to compose herself but continued. She wasn’t sure if the shooter had moved, she said, but the officers were able to help get her up and put her in the back of a police car. She said the patrol car “was riddled with bullets.” She was very thankful that they made it to the hospital, the police car was on its rims. She was praying the entire time because her other three sons were still at the scene.
She “just kept praying for everybody.” She saw the officer that had been shot in front of her when he went by her at the hospital on a gurney. She had never seen anything like that before. “There were shots all around us.” “There were hundreds of rounds.”
“I am thankful. I am so thankful for the Dallas Police Department, and whoever else, the ATF … [was there],” Taylor said. “I am thankful for all of them cause they had no regard for their own life. They stayed there with us. They surrounded my sons and I and I am so thankful for that because all I could do was just lay on top of him and just pray.” She was “so sorry they lost their lives” and kept saying she was “thankful, so thankful. “I have never seen anything like that. The way they came around us, and just guarded us like that.”
Taylor did not find out that her three sons were safe until about another hour. “Just the praise I gave to God. … I never stopped praying.” Taylor really broke down when she said, it was about then when she heard that the officer did not make it. “I was celebrating my kids,” she had to stop because she was sobbing. “I am celebrating my kids being alive and I am listening to them, telling each other how an officer didn’t make it.”
Lana Shadwick is a contributing writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.