This is the gun that Edward used to shoot my mom.
Edward had every intention to get this gun
to kill my entire family.
I don't think my mom saw the person that he was.
She may have just seen the person that she wanted him to be.
It's heartbreaking to hear my mom say
that that's my husband.
To know the person that you loved
and were supposed to spend the rest of your life with,
tried to end your life...
it's a hard pill to swallow.
That's a picture of my brother, Edward, and myself.
I was actually getting ready to go to a 6th-grade dance.
It's very hard to look at pictures of him,
because I would never imagine the person in this picture
would do something like that to us.
If I could, I would erase Edward from this picture.
I never felt comfortable being close to him.
You can see in my body language and in my hands and in my smile
that I wasn't comfortable being there.
There is a gap between us.
That was an unconscious decision to have that space.
But it felt comfortable to keep that space in between us.
My mom's name is Yolanda.
She was my entire world.
We would go on dinner dates. It would be me and her.
We would have like little karaoke sessions in the house.
She was my best friend.
When my mom met Edward, I believe I was six or seven.
They would go on dates,
and he would be at the house all the time.
When she brought Edward around, it was definitely a big deal,
because I've never met anyone else
that she had dated previously.
If I could go back in time,
I would tell my mom to run.
I remember one day, Edward promised
to take me on a picnic.
- Hey! - Hey.
And it was supposed to be me, and my mom, and him,
and we were going to have such a great time.
As a little kid, promises mean a lot.
I'm ready.
I was excited to go on the picnic,
but every time I asked to go on the picnic,
he would say that he was busy
or he had something to do.
One day, when I asked-- and he got angry.
- Not today. - But you always say that.
He frowns his face, and that terrifies me.
He just walked away.
He couldn't give me a straight answer.
He got my hopes up, and he never took me.
To have an adult promise you something and not come through,
it's kinda disappointing.
I'd seen Edward's true colors from the beginning,
and he was just really good at masking that for my mom.
So I do think he was putting a show on for my mom.
My mom was excited to be pregnant.
I was super excited.
Um, I was finally not going to be the only child.
Edward moved in when my mom was still pregnant.
And during that time, it was...
it was uncomfortable.
The relationship between me and my mom was changing.
It didn't feel like he tried to involve me
in their relationship.
A lot of the things that they did, it was him and her.
Felt like he was taking my best friend.
You almost feel erased.
Edward was very manipulative.
He stepped in the way he did intentionally to come between
me and my mom.
It was definitely Edward's way of isolating my mom from me
and from my family as well.
Growing up with Edward in the house--
he made like, specific rules.
Family weren't allowed in specific rooms.
No one could sit in his specific chair.
He was very controlling in his nature.
At one point in time, it became my job
to iron all of Edward's work uniforms.
We had a laundry basket
specifically for his work uniforms.
And I was expected
to iron his shirts and his pants a specific way
put them on a hanger, and hang them
in a specific closet for him.
Edward had a specific crease in his pants and in his shirts
that he liked--- that he expected me to do.
It easily took over an hour.
And if he found one that he didn't specifically like
how I ironed, he would get angry.
What is this?
He would call me stupid. He would say that I'm dumb.
Do it again.
I would have to go back and do all of the uniforms over.
As a little girl, it makes you feel very low.
It kind of breaks your self-confidence.
Moron.
He loved having control and making me suffer.
I didn't want to be around him, and I didn't want to hear those
things about myself.
So even if that meant staying away from my mom,
because him and my mom were in the same room,
I would stay in my room.
It does bother me...
that he used to say those things to me and about me,
to the point that I still do therapy.
My mom was very passive in the relationship with Edward.
She wouldn't tell me to do those things,
but she allowed him to tell me to do those things,
and she allowed him to set the rules of the house.
I think...
that she saw a specific version of Edward,
and that's who she wanted to believe that he was,
to the point where she couldn't see the bad that he was doing.
2 I had a cockatiel named Tweety.
We had Tweety before she met Edward.
When you would walk in the house,
we would open the door and we would say, "Tweety."
And he would go, "Pretty bird, pretty bird."
We would take Tweety out of the cage,
and he would sit on your shoulder.
Once Edward moved in,
I can't recall us letting Tweety out.
It was more so Tweety stayed in his cage.
One day, me and my mom came home.
Edward was home when we came.
He was actually in their bedroom...
"Tweety?"
...and the rest of the house was dark.
"Tweety?"
So we opened the door and I said, "Tweety?"
and I didn't hear anything.
So I'm like, ok, maybe he's asleep or maybe
he didn't hear me.
So I say it again before we fully get in the house
to turn on the lights.
I didn't hear anything.
And I put my book bag down, and I take my coat off,
and I turned on my lights,
and Tweety's laying at the bottom of his cage.
Cockatiels are supposed to live,
I wanna say maybe 15 years.
So he hadn't even lived half of his life.
It was heartbreaking for me to walk in and see my baby...
not responding.
Something's wrong with him.
And I'm holding Tweety, and I'm like,
"Mom, he won't wake up,"
and I'm just crying.
My mom was like, "I think he passed away."
And to hear that was just heartbreaking.
What's going on?
And I told Edward, and I'm just bawling.
Tweety's dead.
We have to do something.
A father would hug their child
and comfort them in that time.
Edward didn't do any of those things.
And I'm like, "I want to bury Tweety."
That was my first pet.
Burying him seemed ideal,
so that way I can have somewhere to go back and visit him.
Give him here. Alright, I'll put him in a box.
He just kind of looks over. He's like, "I'll go bury him.
I'll bury him for you, no problem."
Edward said he buried Tweety while I was at school.
When I asked where Tweety was buried,
he said his sister's house.
Years later, I found out that he didn't actually bury Tweety.
He threw Tweety in the trash.
I'm absolutely certain that Edward killed Tweety.
It seemed like he wanted to only be...
the only good thing in my mom's life.
You have to be a broken person
to want to hurt a kid in that kind of way.
When I was about 12 or 13,
Edward grounded me for an entire year.
When I was punished, it meant no phone, no going outside,
no riding bikes. I couldn't do anything extra.
So it was coming straight home from school
and coming in the house and doing homework,
and that's it.
During that time, a lot of my friends were like,
going to the movies and hanging out.
Again, that's the age where you build-- you start to build
those tighter friendship connections,
and I'm just like, "I-- what did I do?"
But to be locked in the house
and see the kids outside the park
across the street having fun,
it feels like prison.
I think that he took pleasure in knowing that he controlled
that punishment.
We went to kind of visit some relatives.
It was nothing out of the ordinary until the day
we were expected to leave.
I had a class at 8 o'clock the next morning.
So the plan was--
we were supposed to get on the road by a specific time,
um, so that way they could drop me off at school,
and it was super late at night.
He was angry because he was tired.
The car ride coming back home...
was really quiet.
Typically, they would like play music
and kinda sing along to the songs on the radio
or put in a CD, and it was none of that.
They're not talking at all, which was very strange for us.
Growing up, they never argued in front of us.
So...
that space was very awkward to be in.
It was tense and heavy.
It was like yelling, but they--
you could tell the tone that they were angry.
And the argument was about taking me back to school.
Can't believe we have to drive back overnight.
It's your own fault that we didn't get
on the road early.
And my mom is like,
"Well, we told her we would take her back.
"Like, it's not our fault that you woke up late.
"You wanted to sleep.
You said you were tired, so we let you sleep."
My mom is just like, "We have to take her back to school."
And he stops responding,
and he just like, grips the steering wheel.
But like, in that moment, he felt that he lost control,
because my mom put her foot down.
You can see that he's angry.
His face scrunches up, and his nose flares,
and like, his lip goes up.
He floors the gas on the highway.
We're going maybe 80 to 90 miles, and he's like, swerving.
Edward slow down! You'll kill us!
My mom is turned towards him,
and she's like, "My kids are in the car."
Like, "You need to stop."
And during that time,
he doesn't respond.
That was a side of Edward that I've never seen before,
and it was terrifying.
He didn't drop me off at school.
He actually went to our house. He pulled up in the driveway.
He angrily threw the car in park and jumped out of the car
and walked into the house.
That's the first time. that I know of,
that she stood up to him.
And that's the incident that changed everything.
After that incident, nothing, was--
like nothing was the same.
2
I was actually back at school.
I want to say it was maybe 7 or 8 o'clock.
I get this call from my aunt.
And it was my brother on the phone,
and he's crying.
He was telling me that we were gonna be ok.
We were gonna find a house. Everybody's gonna be ok.
I'm very confused.
When he's saying all of this stuff,
the big sister in me is just like,
"I just need to get him to calm down."
He finally gives the phone to my aunt,
and my aunt is just like,
"He hit your mom."
And at that moment,
it just, it feels like everything stopped.
Cause I'd never imagined that happening,
and you're just stuck...
because in my mind,
I'm trying to figure out how we got to this point,
and it's just like, "What happened?"
I finally got to talk to my mom about the situation,
and she had told me that night, her and my brother came home.
They go in the house...
and she said, Edward is just like,
trying to start an argument.
You know what time it is?
He's just like, "Where have you been?"
And, "You had my son out all hours of the night."
"You should have been home."
And he acts like he's going to throw
the remote control at her.
And she jumps.
And he says, "Oh, I got you scared."
I think that was one of them "power moves" that--
again, he likes to play.
So it's, "I have control."
If I throw this,
then you're going to duck.
And now-- you're scared of me now.
So I'm in control.
She went and grabbed her pillow
because she was just gonna go sleep in Arthur's room.
As she was trying to leave out of the room,
he basically pounced on her,
He knocked her over the ottoman, and started hitting her.
Arthur pulls out his phone and calls the police.
Edward realizes that Arthur's calling the police,
and he gets off of my mom and looks at Arthur.
And my mom immediately jumps up.
And she's like, "If you touch him, I'll kill you."
If you touch that boy, you a dead man.
And that's when he walks out of the house.
When I was a kid, it was always stressed that...
you don't put your hands on someone.
If someone puts their hands on you, you leave.
Like, it's no second, third, "I'm sorry."
It's none of that.
It's, "You leave because it's not safe."
And she's always stressed,
"If they did it once, then they'll probably do it again."
It was hard to hear my mom tell...
this horrific story to me over the phone.
Like, it almost seemed surreal.
Like it--
I wouldn't have imagined anything like that ever happening.
I'm stressed, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm worried.
I could tell she was crying.
She was like, "Don't worry. We had everything figured out."
When she told me that I felt relieved...
because she was finally getting away.
Like, she finally had had enough.
Like, that was her last straw.
My mom filed and was granted a restraining order
against Edward.
But I knew my mom was leaving,
and I thought that that was the end of it.
My mom was granted a restraining order,
and in that restraining order, Edward was supposed to stay
away for my mom, Arthur, and myself.
Even though the restraining order
told him to not contact anyone within the family,
Edward would still call my aunts.
He would still go past family members' houses
and try to plead with them
to get my mom to talk to him.
I would say it-- he was stalking her.
It was one instance in particular
where my mom had a doctor's appointment.
And when my mom came out of the doctor's appointment,
he had left a letter on her windshield of her car.
When my mom seen the note on her car, she was scared.
It is scary to think that he followed my mom,
because if he knew where she was at the doctor's office,
then I would think that Edward knew
where she was staying at.
Finding out that he left a note on my mom's car made me angry.
I knew that he was violating this restraining order.
My mom had actually told the judges and told her lawyers
that Edward was breaking this restraining order.
And they didn't do anything about it.
They should have locked him up, but they didn't.
In this situation, my mom did everything that she was
supposed to, by law, to protect herself and us,
and bad things still happened.
It would have definitely been different
if they had actually listened to my mom.
Edward was allowed supervised visitation with Arthur
um, one Sunday uh, every week.
The visitation between Edward and my brother took place
at a domestic violence shelter.
The place was chosen by the court
because it was a neutral ground.
My mom could drop Arthur off at the visitation center
without having any interaction with Edward.
So, the plan for Mother's Day that morning--
um, my mom was supposed to pick me up.
Um, I was going to ride with her
to drop Arthur off at his visitation that morning.
And then once she dropped Arthur off,
we were supposed to go back to my aunt's house
and just enjoy brunch.
My mom calls me that morning,
and she's like, "Are you still riding with me?"
And I'm just like, "No, I'm too tired."
'Cause I was like, "I'm just gonna sleep in.'"
May have been an hour.
I get a phone call from my aunt.
I picked up the phone and she's yelling.
She's like, "Don't brush your teeth,
"Don't jump in the shower, don't do anything,
just get dressed."
She's like, "Just go get in the car."
So I immediately jump out of the bed
and I'm like, trying to throw on clothes,
and I'm running, trying to put on my shoes.
And I'm like, "What's happening?"
I get into the backseat of the car-- I'm out of breath,
and I'm like, "What is happening?"
And she turns around and she's crying,
and she said that "Edward shot your mom."
I need a second.
2
That's the Mother's Day card
that they found with the bullet hole in it.
The message that he put in the card said, "Love, Boo."
That's not even close to love.
That's almost like you hate someone.
Edward was willing to take my mother's life
and attempted to take my brother's life
because he didn't wanna see them happy.
This is the perfect example of,
"I love you, but I hate that I can't have you."
I can't look at it anymore.
I didn't know if she was alive.
It was like...
everything had crumbled from beneath me.
I don't think it's any words
to describe...
that feeling.
I don't think I've ever felt hurt...
as much as I did that day.
I couldn't think, I couldn't process.
It almost felt like I couldn't even breathe.
And then...
something in me realized that my brother was there.
I'm like, "What happened to Arthur?
Like, "Where's my brother? Is he ok?"
And nobody could give me an answer.
I didn't learn the details until we got to the hospital.
So that morning, my aunt had volunteered to ride in the car
with her to drop Arthur off.
They went to the visitation center,
and my mom and Arthur got out of the car.
Edward was at the top of the hill on a bicycle.
Edward rode down the hill.
He jumped off the bike in front of my mother and my brother,
and he told my mom her time was up.
It's over!
And that's when he pulled out a gun,
and he tried to shoot my brother...
Arthur, move!
...but my mom pushed my brother out of the way,
and she got shot.
Yolanda!
He wanted my mother to see her son die first...
...and Edward tries to shoot my mom three to four more times,
but the gun jams.
My brother runs to the van where my aunt is parked at,
and Arthur's on the phone with the police.
And he points the gun...
at the car,
and yells at my aunt, "Imma kill you, B."
And tries to shoot at the van,
and the bullet ricochets off the windshield.
And he runs back up the hill, and he disappears.
Not even in my wildest dreams...
...would I have thought
that he would've done something like that.
This was the 911 call that my brother made
after my mother was shot.
I'm uh, I'm so hurt that my little brother was the one
who had to make this call.
That-- that's really hard to listen to.
You can hear that Arthur's panicking.
I don't ever want to hear anything like that ever again...
from my brother or anyone else's child.
It's... difficult to picture that entire situation in my head.
Um, that's not something that anyone should...
imagine or have to ever think about.
But...
this nightmare was my life.
And Edward was the one who made this a nightmare.
Since that day,
Arthur has put on this shell,
and he feels that he has to be the strong one.
Before this he was able to be a child.
And after witnessing all of this,
he wasn't able to be a child anymore.
My mom had arrived at the hospital
and they had tooken her back for CT scans
to see how bad the damage was.
And I went back to see her...
...and she had her eyes closed.
And I'm like, "Mom are you ok? Are you ok?"
And she opens her eyes...
and she's like, "I'm fine. I'll be ok--
if they could just make the pain stop."
Walking in there and seeing her alive...
was like a sigh of relief,
but we obviously knew that it had done some damage
and they were also telling us that the bullet didn't come out.
I just held her hand
and, crying, and telling her I love her.
And then they said they had to take her to surgery.
And when they wheeled her away,
I didn't know if that was the last time I would see my mom.
2 The last time I was here was before the shooting.
I try my best to not ever come around to this area.
It just brings back too many memories.
It's just a really hard pill to swallow,
knowing that my entire world
changed in front of this place.
I want to be able to air those wounds out to be able to heal.
Yikes.
To be here and, again, see this sign.
This is domestic violence awareness.
And it's sickening to know,
that, again, this was supposed to be a safe space.
And my mom almost lost her life at this safe space.
The actual shooting, where did that transpire?
Right here.
To look at the spot and be where...
Edward tried to take my mother's life,
it's just...
you don't have the words.
My mom was in surgery.
It, to me, it feels like forever.
Um, but I want to say, it--
it could have been anywhere between five to six hours.
Every time we seen a doctor come out, my heart stopped.
It's sickening, it's gut-wrenching.
When the surgery's finally done, I walked into the room,
and my mom is just laying there,
and it's all these wires and machines and--
a lot of beeping-- and she's just stretched out on the bed.
If I didn't know that that was my mom,
I wouldn't be able to recognize her.
That is one of the images that haunts me the most.
I've never seen these pictures before.
This is my worst nightmare in a picture.
Everything that you could possibly imagine
from that day comes back.
The numb feeling, the feeling of not knowing,
the feeling of being scared, the smells, the sound,
it all just floods back.
Standing beside the bed,
I didn't know if she could hear me.
And I didn't care if she could,
but I wanted her to know that I was there.
And I wanted her to know that I loved her.
This is the first note that my mom...
wrote while she was in the intensive care unit.
And this is something that I hold close to my heart.
It says, "I love you, Arthur. I love Deon."
At the time, she was still intubated,
so she couldn't speak.
She-- we were surprised that she was even able to write this,
eight days after being shot.
This note means that my mom heard us.
She knew we were there,
and she was gonna fight for us.
I can't look at that,
And I know exactly what that picture is.
It's his mugshot-- and it almost looks like he's smiling.
And it makes me so angry,
because it's almost like he enjoyed what he did.
And I, I just--
I can't stomach looking at his face.
If there was anything lower than Hell,
it's where Edward should be.
It's like the judge said,
"Edward doesn't deserve to see the light of day."
And I don't even think...
prison is where he should be.
If not prison, where should he be?
Edward should be where he tried to put my mom.
My mom was so lucky that day.
And...
my family always, we always talk about
how we believe that
the angels of our family that passed away
were the ones who saved my mom.
Because Edward tried to shoot my mother four times
after the initial first shot.
And those four angels were my grandmother, my grandfather,
my great grandmother, and my great grandfather.
And they made sure...
that my mom didn't sustain any additional harm.
My mom is one of the strongest people I know.
And she put up one hell of a fight.
My mom literally took a bullet for my brother.
And my mom would do anything to protect us.
My mom is a hero, and she's my hero.
He was like a monster when they just hatch.
Don't let him into your life.
Don't let him in.
He had me by the throat, grabbed a knife and said,
"You'll be dead before the cops get here."