It may have been the most difficult journey Octavia Southall has ever taken. Nevertheless, as a woman of the cloth, the Kansas City mother felt morally compelled to escort her own teenage son, Michael Bray, to the police station to surrender after she saw a surveillance video of the 18-year-old pointing a gun at an elderly veteran.
According to Kevin Jackson of The Blacksphere:
The 85-year-old, disabled, military veteran had been robbed twice within a couple of days, and both episodes were caught on surveillance video.
He was badly beaten during the first robbery, and two days later, the urban terrorists struck again….
When the local media repeatedly aired the upsetting footage, Michael Bray’s mother recognized and confronted him. It was then that he admitted his involvement, and shortly thereafter, she ushered him to the police station.
The youth was charged with first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary, and two counts of armed criminal action. Thanks to public input, based partly on Southall’s selfless and righteous act, some of the other perpetrators were rounded up and charged.
Jackson writes that Southall had to wrestle not only with her own conscience over whether to send her son to jail but with the no-snitch ideology that pervades the inner city throughout America. “Until that destructive mindset is defeated,” he writes, “crime and victimization rates will remain disproportionately high in the Black community,” adding:
With the abundance of baby mamas/daddies and scarcity of mothers/fathers in the hood, criminal behavior is always justified, and daringly turning in a criminal will have the do-gooder shunned as if he/she joined the Republican Party.
As evidence of his claim, Jackson cites the damnable lie told by Katrina Elkins, the aunt of 17-year-old De’Marquise Elkins, accused of murdering a 1-yr-old as he sat in his stroller. Despite numerous eyewitnesses to the killing, several of whom called 911, Katrina Elkins told authorities, “There is no doubt in my mind that he is innocent. He was with us the whole time.” She was subsequently arrested for obstruction of justice.
