Police officer calms 6-year-old girl during homicide investigation: 'There are people out here, especially police officers, that are good'
A Mobile, Ala., mother was able to capture an inspiring moment during one of her family’s darkest days on Saturday.
DeCynda Brown and her 6-year-old daughter, Ray’Ghan, rushed to their family’s side after they heard the news that their cousin, Justin Mooney, was the victim of a shooting. Mooney, a public service worker, was taking care of his mother when he walked outside of her home and was killed in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting.
“We found out about Justin, and my mom, Ray’Ghan, and I went to the scene just to check on Justin’s mom, just to see what was going on,” Brown tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “When we got there, Ray’Ghan was nervous.”
A crime scene, understandably, is enough to make a little girl terrified — but her mother taught her to always seek help with the right people when she was scared. Ray’Ghan went to her mother, her grandmother, and ultimately, she asked if she could speak to a police officer at the scene.
“Ray’Ghan was saying she was scared, and she saw the police, and she kept asking if she could speak to them. I said, ‘He’s busy,’ but she kept on asking, ‘Mommy, can I talk to him? Can I talk to him?’” Brown says. Her mother eventually initiated the conversation between Ray’Ghan and Sergeant Trey Davis.
The interaction was captured on video by Brown.
“He just started talking to her, asked her who made her bow, what school she went to,” Brown tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “He got so personal with her. He kneeled down, and they were talking for 30 minutes. He was just talking to her as if he knew her. She’s very shy, so the way she talked to him and for him to stop what he was doing to talk to her, it was very nice.”
At her kindergarten graduation, Ray’Ghan said she wanted to be a police officer when she grows up. “I thought she would say a dancer, or maybe a nurse,” her mother muses, “but she hasn’t had a change of heart at all. It’s just something she wants to do.”
The young girl seems to possess the essential quality of a police officer as well. “She wants to help others,” Brown says. “My grandmother and my mom, that’s what we tried to instill in her — to help others. Don’t always look for other people to do for you; sometimes you need to give back to others, and don’t expect anything from it.”
During a time when relationships between police and civilians are incredibly strained, Brown is teaching her daughter to recognize that there are police officers whose hearts are in the right place.
“Even though she’s young, she sees that stuff on TV [regarding police officers], but I always tell her, ‘You never go off the judgment of somebody else; you make your own judgment of people,” Brown says. “Every police officer isn’t bad. … There are people out here, especially police officers, that are good, and they’re doing it for the right reasons.”
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