Texas woman shot while protecting son says she’d march again

Taylor’s sister, Theresa Williams, told the Associated Press earlier Sunday that Taylor had gone to the protest because she was fed up with the recent shootings of black men by police.

Ms Taylor said, in her opinion, the police were not all “out to get us” and that people should reserve judgment. She began to sob, covering her face.

Johnson launched his ambush during a protest against the killings of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana by police officers. Johnson was aiming at police but also wounded others, including Taylor. She wants her sons — ages 12, 13, 15 and 17 — to know it was an isolated incident. Despite being anxious for her children, she was also concerned for the families of the victims involved in the shooting.

She remembered mostly white officers protecting her and Andrew.

“They were as confused as I was”, he said. At one point, Taylor says she ended up covering the body of one of her sons, and that is when a bullet ripped through her leg. Doctors at the Baylor Scott & White Hospital say Taylor had “a very serious injury” from the shooting, including a fracture above the tibia. After she repeated herself, this time louder, the officer jumped on top of both of them to protect them. One of them shouted, “Is anybody hit?'”

Andrew yelled no, unaware that his mother was injured.

While they were huddled on the ground, she saw another officer get shot in front of her.

Taylor said she always taught her children to respect law enforcement and she has always admired officers. “There was another one at our feet and another one over our head and several of them lying against a wall. They were really heroes for us”. Walking up Main Street, they stopped at a corner where a police officer had blocked traffic, waiting to cross.

More shots, and another officer fell.

Soon after, police decided it was time to escape to a nearby patrol auto, which Taylor could see was already “riddled with bullets”. They ducked behind a stone pillar. He’s the first officer in DART’s 27-year history to be killed in the line of duty.

“I wanted to show them we can be unified, that there could be a peaceful march”, she said. “Run!” The crowd scattered.

Kavion and Jermar found shelter at Union Station.

Taylor’s fourth son, Jajuan, 14, had followed his mother’s orders: To run.

“Get to safety!” a woman told him.

But he didn’t know how, “and I didn’t want to be by myself”.

Taylor got separated from three of her sons.

A mother’s natural impulse is to protect her children – at all costs. They borrowed a phone and called their mother’s cell phone.

Gun-rights activists, some of them wearing camouflage and military-style gear and openly toting rifles and handguns, marched alongside the hundreds of people who flocked to downtown Dallas last week to protest. “He just folded over”, Wisner said about how JaJuan reacted to hearing news that his mother might be dead, according to the LA Times. She tried to reassure him. “They surrounded my son and I”, she said.

She’s thankful for all the officers who she said had no regard for their own life.

“I’m so thankful for the Dallas Police Department”, she said.

As Taylor laid in the hospital bed with news of the Dallas shooting playing in her room, she was thinking about the other families who lost loved ones during the shooting, Williams said.

“It hurt”, she said.