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Baltimore: Mother praised for beating rioting son
A Baltimore mother was filmed hitting her son on the head after she spotted him rioting and throwing rocks during the Baltimore unrest.
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A woman seen berating and hitting a black-clad teenager, later confirmed to be her son, has been hailed as "mum of the year" after her intervention on the Baltimore streets was caught on video. As violence flared up across the US city on Monday, the woman, who was identified as Toya Graham on Tuesday afternoon, was filmed telling her child to "take that f—— mask off."
Ms Graham spoke to CBS News about the video, which initially went viral with little context. In the interview, Ms Graham tells the network that she intervened out of concern for her 16-year-old son's safety.
"That's my only son and at the end of the day I don't want him to be a Freddie Gray," Graham said.
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Fox Business contributor Charles Payne drew attention to the video in a tweet on Monday, saying his mother would have done the same thing.
By late Monday, videos of the incident were so widespread that Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts brought it up in an overnight news conference.
"And if you saw in one scene, you had a mother who grabbed their child who had a hood on his head and she started smacking him on the head because she was so embarrassed," Batts told reporters. "I wish I had more parents who took charge of their kids tonight. I think these were youth coming out of the high school and they thought it was cute to throw cinder blocks at the police department and address it that way."
Baltimore's ABC affiliate, WMAR, caught the encounter on camera, but initially provided only this as an explanation:
This Baltimore mum saw her son throwing rocks at police on television.
That didn't sit well with her.
The video shows the mother repeatedly striking her boy, chasing him as he tries to walk away.
The clip emerged alongside widely broadcast images of violence that dotted some sections of Baltimore on Monday afternoon and evening.
It doesn't appear that the violence stemmed from organised protests over the death of Freddie Gray, who died of a severe spinal injury suffered while in police custody. His funeral was held on Monday.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said late on Monday that the day's violence was the result of "thugs who always want to incite violence and destroy our city. Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs who, in a very senseless way, are trying to tear down what so many have fought for."
Although the video of one mother expressing frustration over the violence may stand out as a positive moment in an increasingly grim situation, there have been others. On Tuesday morning, volunteers took to the streets to help clean up the mess left behind.
The unrest on Baltimore's streets left substantial damage. The mayor's office said 15 buildings and 144 cars had been set on fire and more than 200 people arrested, the bulk of them adults.
The Maryland National Guard has 2000 troops on the streets along with 1000 police officers brought in from Maryland and surrounding states.
Washington Post
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1P4mYgb
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