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| Jessica Arrendale |
It began Saturday night when Jessica and Cobie’s father, 30-year old Antoine Davis, went out for the evening. At some point, Ionniello said, Davis, a former Marine who served in Iraq, became belligerently drunk and abusive. It had happened many times, Ionniello said, but her daughter did not seem able to turn Davis away no matter how often he abused her.
Davis chased Arrendale up the stairs of her three-story townhome in the Oakdale Bluffs subdivision sometime around midnight, she said.
Arrendale tried to defend herself with a baseball bat, but she was overpowered by the former serviceman, who struck her several times with the bat, Ionniello said.
Arrendale had the six-month old child in her arms. Little Cobie may have been hit in the head by the baseball bat, according to her grandmother. The child has a traumatic head injury.
Arrendale locked herself in a bathroom. Davis got his gun, an assault rifle outfitted with a suppressor. He burst into the bathroom and, while Arrendale was still holding Cobie in her arms, shot the young mother in the head, Ionniello said.
“He shot her and they (police) don’t know how she was able to twist her body and fall literally in the opposite direction,” Ionniello said. Instead of falling onto the floor, Ionniello said her daughter fell over the toilet, dropping little Cobie into the water-filled bowl.
“She had pure will,” Ionniello said. “She wanted that baby to live.”
Cobie’s grandmother believes Davis intended to kill both mother and child, but unable to see the child inside the toilet bowl, covered by Arrendale’s body, he left the bathroom, walked into the baby’s room and shot himself.
If this man had ONLY had a baseball bat, and no access to that assault rifle, this young mother might still be alive.
Imagine the courage it would take to realize that you are dying and to use your last breath to ensure the survival of your child.
It kind of sounds to me as if the man may have been suffering from PTSD, which means this woman is yet another casualty of the wars started by the George Bush administration.
The wars that did nothing to make us free. We did not fight for our freedom. Our freedom was never in jeopardy. I grow tired of people saying these Middle East wars are a fight for OUR freedom. Certainly, the wars have impacted the freedoms of those in the Middle East. Folks in Iraq might have more freedom now, but they also have less security.
ReplyDeleteIf people in the Middle East want THEIR freedom, they need to do the fighting; not us. I thought going into Iraq was a mistake in 2003 and I still feel that way.
Other than that, I cannot comment on this article. It is just too heartbreaking.
Caroll Thompson, I totally agree.
DeleteRight on, Carroll. We didn't fight those wars for freedom, we fought them for dominion. (Economic as well as geopolitical.)
DeleteWe fight wars in other countries to prevent threats from becoming bigger and flowing into our country and killing our citizens.
Delete9/11 Should be a huge reminder of that fact alone. How many Terrorists have been killed who, left alone for all these years, would have made it to the US to kill our citizens?
Of course you never think of that when spouting lunatic ideas such as "We did not fight for our freedom.".
Luckily for you, and many others, some of our leaders actually have had the foresight and resolve to ACT instead of REACT.
BAM!!!!
ReplyDeleteA Veteran’s Scathing Response to Republican Warmongers Out for Blood
...This threat exists because war and conflict have destabilized the region.
More war won’t fix that.
Just as throwing more and more of our children into Vietnam didn’t bring peace or stability there.
Most certainly we should be concerned. We should be outraged and appalled at the brutality and the horror. Absolutely we should be. Absolutely we should acknowledge our role in this mess and provide what support we can to aid those caught in the middle. With caution. With prudence. With an understanding that real peace and stability can’t be imposed at the muzzle of a gun or dropped from a bomb bay or by shouting Kill ‘em!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no pacifist – though I don’t care if you think I am.
I’m no Neville Chamberlain. I’m no isolationist. I spent my entire life in the military. I did my time in Iraq. But my oath was to defend the United States, not throw my life and the lives of the forces under my command away for political goals or because fearful men shake in terror at the thought of what might happen someday.
And that, right there, is the real lesson of Vietnam.
http://aattp.org/a-veterans-scathing-response-to-republican-warmongers-out-for-blood/
Anon @ 6:43 and other readers:
DeleteYou do not have to go all the way to the aattp.com site to read this, though I am glad they attributed it to Jim Wright on their page.
Look for his Stonekettle Station at the top left of this page and click on it.
This is his essay from yesterday, and you may want to comment there.
His writings are always correct, concise, logical and brutally honest. Without reservations, I hold him in the highest regard.
His essay needs to be sent to every member of Congress! One of his best. Thanks for posting this. I read it last night and was in awe of his writing. He does not mince words!
DeleteAnonymous 6:45 – Interesting comment. Obama has surely had his lifetime quota (and then some) of stupid white people, lol. Most, like Palin, are incapable of even seeing the irony: SIMPLY BECAUSE HE IS BLACK, they perceive themselves to be the superior ones. And then they proceed to fall right on their faces, into their own stupid traps. It's like watching the real-life version of the Road Runner and Wiley Coyote, but on a daily basis.
ReplyDeleteToo bad we value guns more than people. We've made guns sacred. We worship them and they control our culture.
ReplyDeleteToo bad we can't restrict them, like the deadly devices they are.
"It kind of sounds to me as if the man may have been suffering from PTSD"
ReplyDelete---------------
Or he was an abusive, drunk before he enlisted. I believe PTSD is very real, however let's not attributed it to every veteran that is violent.
Damn Cheney and the Bushes. They are criminally liable for so many things. We know they will never be prosecuted for what they have done. Their hands drip with blood. This poor young woman. I hope the baby recovers.
ReplyDeleteCheney and Bush were best friends with the Saudis, who behead people publicly on a daily basis. Guess that still does not offend them, their base, or most Americans. But when ISIL (a different sect of wahhabism: ISIL says that when it's finished, it's coming to Riyad, because the Saudis are too liberal and corrupt for them) beheads people, oh, that's an entirely different story: we should go to war, go into deep national debt, and sacrifice our soldiers for that!! How about using Sarah's original suggestion, before she heard the GOP talking points and changed her mind: just let them kill one another off and stay out of the whole mess.
Delete“When you grow up black in America, you have to learn how to be patient with stupid white people. And, folks? That is a lot of what government is, no matter what color you are: Being patient with stupid white people.”
ReplyDelete****
So TRUE! VERY STUPID WHITE PEOPLE like Sarah Palin Her people!
Much as I despise guns, a person can kill with a baseball bat as well. I hope the baby survives her "traumatic head injury" from the baseball bat and gun wielding father. What a legacy he has left for his child.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
8:40 a.m. Stop with the strawman arguments. NO one is claiming that if we eliminate guns, we eliminate all murder, or all violence. What we eliminate is the ease of fatal violence.
DeleteGrowing up in 1950s female was all about being patient with stupid males.
ReplyDeleteIt's 2014, 9:36 qm - some things NEVER change
ReplyDeleteSomeone wise once said that "To be a parent means forever to have a piece of your heart in your child's body". This brave woman's last act was to try to save that piece of her heart with little regard for whatever would happen to her. This is bravery.
ReplyDeleteThe man who went to his bedroom and shot himself in the head? Pure Cowardice.
There's a man at the gym we belong to who scares the hell out of me. I see his car in the parking lot and keep moving on my way. He's so hyped up on Testosterone supplements and anabolic steroids, he gets violent at the drop of a hat, but the gym can't do a thing about it, according to the cops, he has to act out on his threats, hurt or kill someone FIRST.