“It’s like we’ve got a voice now. People are listening,” says 53-year-old Billy Inman, whose teenage son was murdered by an illegal alien nearly sixteen years ago. “Donald Trump gives us a little bit of hope. … For years, I’d talk to our ‘elected ones,’ and it was like talking to a wall … [but] Donald Trump is bringing us onto his stage.”
In June 2000, the Inman family—Billy, Kathy, their 16-year-old son Dustin, and their dog Lucky–were on their way to enjoy an early Father’s Day family fishing trip. They were stopped at a traffic light when an illegal alien rear-ended their car at over 60 mph, killing Dustin instantly. Billy and Kathy were knocked unconscious. When Billy finally regained consciousness days later, he found himself in a world in which his son was dead and his wife was in a coma. Kathy remained in a coma for five weeks and suffered spinal injuries that would render her confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life and would force her to endure unending pain, weekly doctor visits, and frequent medical procedures.
“We didn’t get to go to our son’s funeral,” Billy Inman told Breitbart.
“The doctors told our family members that they didn’t know if we would live or not. I was in the hospital nearly two weeks after the crash, and she [Kathy] was in the hospital for three months. The families–my mother and her father–got together and made the decision to hold the funeral [without us].”
Billy and Kathy Inman said that this tragedy and their subsequent efforts in the fight to close America’s borders made their choice of whom to vote for in the 2016 election plainly simple.
“I voted for Trump because of the way he feels about illegal immigration. He’s going to do something about it,” Kathy Inman told Breitbart. As a result of the car crash, Mrs. Inman now suffers from dystonia, a neurological movement disorder, which causes her muscles to involuntarily contract and twist painfully and uncontrollably.
Donald Trump “loves America,” Billy Inman explained. “This man is one of the richest people that we have. He could live anywhere in the world if he wants to, but he chooses America. He lives in New York and Florida. He’s raised his kids here, his grandkids here. He loves America.”
Inman said that he does not believe any of the other politicians running for president are committed to securing the nation’s borders. “Cruz is a talker,” Inman explained, adding:
He can talk about it, but I haven’t seen nothing done. He might come out–especially during election times–and say, “This needs to be done, and that needs to be done,” but nothing has ever gotten done on illegal immigration with any teeth to it. … He’s going to be more of the same. He didn’t say nothing about this until after Donald Trump got into it. Why?
“I wish he [Cruz] cared as much about American people–and got as angry about what’s happened to us–as he’s gotten about Donald Trump tweeting about his wife,” Inman said.
Inman explained he does not foresee Cruz being any different than George W. Bush on the issue of immigration. “Bush broke my heart,” Inman said. “He was more of the same–more of the open borders stuff. Ted Cruz will be more of the same too. He’s more establishment than Donald Trump.”
Inman explained:
It’s not just Cruz, Bush, or Obama. It’s every one of our elected ones from every city, state, and town that we have. Everybody’s passing the buck, and it falls back on the working man; the legal American folks are the ones who are losing, and it just ain’t right. … My son’s killer is still running. … Everyone just keeps kicking this can down the road.
“I wish the RNC and Cruz would fight as hard to secure our borders as they’re fighting to not let Trump into office,” Inman said. “It bothers me that they’re more bothered by him and are working harder to get rid of him and are spending all this money [to get rid of him], instead of fixing the problems that he’s addressing.”
“What have they done to help?” Inman continued. Elaborating, he said:
People don’t really care about me. Anytime I see somebody, they say, “My condolences. I’m sorry for you.” But nothing’s been done. I want people to be involved [in this issue] without having to join this club [of the American victims of illegal alien crime] that we’ve been thrown into. … We’ve got to have a voice somewhere. …Politicians like Donald Trump give us a little bit of hope. It gives some kind of hope to me because there are so many people that have tried to bring attention to this stuff, but they’re knocked down. They’re tired. I feel like I’ve talked to this wall so many times here. For years, I’d talk to our ‘elected ones’ and it was like talking to a wall.
Inman said that he was also concerned about Heidi Cruz’s endorsement and co-authorship of a 2005 report entitled “Building a North American Community.”
“A lot of the elites are trying to have this North American Union. This superhighway from Texas to Canada,” Inman said while speaking of Heidi Cruz. “Look at how many of them are supporting that.”
Inman said that, by contrast, Donald Trump will not be beholden to corporate donors and open borders special interests. “He’s funding all of this himself,” Inman said. “And he’s not scared. He’s not backing down from nothing.”
Inman said that he was not surprised that Cruz had recently earned the endorsement of open borders advocate Sen. Lindsey Graham:
I look at it like this: they’re all establishment, and that’s why the establishment likes Ted Cruz. He’s been in office for a while, and he’s more of the same stuff that they’ve had. Donald Trump is rocking their boats. … He [Trump] has got more of the American people involved now. He’s got more people now involved in this and speaking their minds about it–the everyday working man.
“I met him one time for just a couple of minutes, and his handshake meant the world to me,” Inman said of Donald Trump. “It was firm. It wasn’t paper. … He’s got all of Washington shook up, and they’re trying to get rid of him.”
Inman said that the money the special interests have poured into the “Never Trump” movement could be better used to help Americans. “For as much money as they’ve spent, there should be nobody that’s hungry in America. There’s so much waste. There shouldn’t be nobody hungry in America.”
“I think our world is turned upside down,” Inman continued. “To me, America used to be respected, and today it’s not. Washington has just gotten so far away from everyday people–from the American people. We all need help. I’m 53 years old, and today, times are nothing like it was when I was growing up. I know things change with time, but it’s just amazing how much has changed–and I don’t see it being better,” Inman said. “I truly feel if immigration were fixed, our health care would be better, our education would be better, our roads would be better, our infrastructure, unemployment,” and, of course, the safety of innocent American children like Dustin.
“I want something done so this doesn’t happen to others, but there’s just too many people that just don’t care. Even when you have family members that tell you we’re wasting our time. They say it’s making my wife worse, and the depression and all of the issues she’s got going on worse. They say it’s just dragging her heartache out even longer—they don’t understand that our heartache isn’t going to be any longer or lesser either way,” Inman said.
“I feel so sorry for my wife, and I don’t know how to help her,” he said. “I can’t help her, except love her, and she deserves better than what she’s got. She’s heart broken, on top of the pain she lives physically every day. I have to take her to the doctor’s just about every week because of this. The brain injury she got [from the wreck]—the physical pain that she has to live daily because of this. She’s has something called Dystonia, her muscles have set and curl up. She wakes up crying.”
“We’ve been through a lot,” Kathy Inman explained. “And we’re still going through a lot. Billy still has to watch me go through pain every day. He has to hear me cry and scream.”
“It really hurts. It really hurts bad,” Mrs. Inman said slowly. “It really hurts bad. I miss my only child bad. He was our only child.”
“He was going to take care of us when we got older,” Billy added quietly, making a practical observation that oftentimes gets overlooked in these sorts of stories. Growing older will now be immeasurably more difficult given the physical injuries the Inmans suffered at the hands of the illegal alien.
“Dustin was just starting his life,” Bill Inman said. “I just realized here a couple months ago. One of my customers had a birthday and I said, ‘How old are you now? You’re getting to be an old man!’ My customer was 31 and that’s when I realized my son would have been a grown man today. I had hopes of moving to the mountains, kicking back. Dustin always said [when he grew up] he wanted 10 kids because he was the only kid in our family,” Inman chuckled at the memory.
“I was just hoping to be a grandpa and retire and move up in the mountains and take the grandkids fishing and playing ball with them or something. Our dreams are shot. And I just really don’t know… [Inman trails off] I just thank God as best I can and try again tomorrow.”
“Dustin was my pride and joy. … He looked like his Momma, but he acted like his Daddy,” Inman said, laughing. “He had the best of both worlds.”
“He loved hunting and fishing, but fishing was his favorite. He fished anything that would bite. He’d always catch something when he went fishing. I’ve got people that still talk about him today. They say, ‘That boy could catch a fish out of a mud hole.’ He just had the patience and the will to catch something. But me and him, we fished and hunted just every week, just about. I haven’t been fishing since this has happened because that was his favorite thing to do.”
“He was my buddy. We done everything together pretty much. I’d never leave him at home to go to a party or nothing like that. If we had a party, he went with us. Ever since he was a little feller. And it was people’s respect for him that blows my mind away. People up on our street here—heck, even the preacher a couple of houses up from us—he’d say, ‘Billy, I want you to know… he was really respected.’ They admired him for how he was. And that just makes me feel so good. Like I said, I was proud to have been his dad. I really was. I can’t say that ‘He did this,’ or ‘he did that’ or he didn’t do nothing better than anybody else, but… I can tell you how so many people would say that he just brightened up a room when he came into it. He’d walk in and people would just come up to him and they’d start talking or they’d start smiling. [And they’d say] ‘There’s Dustin!’ or ‘Dustin, where you been? What have you been up to?’ or ‘Dustin, let’s go do this.’ It was really something else to watch.”
“He was just starting his life. I mean, he had just turned 16 years old, had his learner’s license, and was going to go get his driver’s license. And then this happened, and it’s a hole in my heart that can never be healed,” Inman said.
“I’ve got Dustin’s last picture that I love tremendously,” Inman told Breitbart. “He was at a car show, having a funnel cake, and he’s with his grandparents and his aunt and uncle, but that particular day, some other boys that were at the car show, they found a baby deer–a little fawn–in the woods.” The boys had led the fawn away from the woods and started bringing it around the car show.
When Dustin saw what the other boys were doing, he stood up and said, “Y’all leave this fawn alone. Its momma will come back and get it. Its momma will be coming back for it.” Dustin then proceeded to follow the boys back into the woods to make sure they had returned the innocent fawn to its home where Dustin knew the mother deer would return to look for her baby.
“I just love that that was his last picture,” Inman said. “Him eating his funnel cake out there. With the grin on his face. It was a pretty day. I just love that that was his last picture. God, I was proud to have been his dad.”