Debate Magazine

The Strange Case of Miriam Carey Who Was Gunned Down by D.C. Police

By Eowyn @DrEowyn

Do you remember that strange incident last October 3, when a young black woman, with her toddler child in the back seat, was gunned down by D.C. police and security officers after a harrowing car chase from the White House?

Miriam Carey

Her name is Miriam Carey

Wikipedia describes her as a 34-year-old dental hygienist from Stamford, Connecticut, who attempted to drive through a White House security checkpoint in her black Infiniti G37 coupe, striking one of the White House barriers at the intersection of 15th St. and E St. NW across from Pennsylvania Avenue. She then struck a U.S. Secret Service officer, who fell on the hood of the car and rolled off. Secret Service chased Carey to the Capitol buildingwhere she was fatally shot by law enforcement officers. An 18-month-old child, Carey’s daughter, was found unharmed in the car.

On the day of the incident, Carey was supposed to be taking her daughter to a doctor’s appointment in Connecticut. The FBI found two medications in her apartment, as well as a laptop, a flash drive and three nonfunctional cell phones. Federal officials said she may have suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and believed Barack Obama was communicating with her. Federal officials said no weapons were found in the car.

Esther Goldberg writes for The American Spectator on Oct. 27, 2013:

According to the Oct. 14 Hartford Courant, the police report describes Miriam’s driving as “erratic.” Rather than stopping at a security checkpoint near the White House, she turned around and left, knocking down a policeman in her confused effort to escape. A car chase ensued, with police firing at her moving car, and when Miriam’s car was finally blocked in so she could not move, the police fired into her car, killing her. She didn’t have a chance.

Was Miriam “a potential assassin or a confused, frightened person suffering from mental illness trying to get herself out of danger,” the Courant asks. It doesn’t answer the question, and the doubt it expresses suggests that it’s open season on people who have small accidents with a barrier near the White House. When in doubt forget the presumption of innocence, shoot to kill.

A similar note of doubt has also begun to creep into the opinions of the intellectuals and experts who had previously been certain that Miriam was a potential killer. In an October 10Washington Post opinion piece, John Jay professor James Mulvaney suggested that if a suspect doesn’t obey an officer’s command, they should “try a different approach…..Try a request instead of an order. Shouting like an Army drill sergeant can be counterproductive…” And that doesn’t even begin to describe what happened. Instead, there was a wild police chase, with a half dozen policemen shouting at Miriam and waving military grade weapons.

So maybe Miriam wasn’t a “potential assassin.” For the police apologists, maybe she was simply suffering from a mental illness. I wasn’t aware that that was grounds for execution, but then I’m a little out of touch with modern theories of capital punishment. The problem, however, is where is the proof? The press has jumped on this, with the same absolute certainty with which they had previously identified her as a killer, but where’s the evidence? Her doctor hasn’t confirmed that she was unbalanced. Her sisters and friends deny it. Prescriptions for the anti-depressants Risperidone and Lexapro were found in Miriam’s apartment. Big deal. Over half the country must be on one form or other of these medications. 

Valarie Carey
Valarie Carey, sister of Miriam.

In the video below, Rev./Dr. James David Manning refers to a phone interview he had with Miriam’s sister, Valarie Carey, who is a retired New York City police sergeant, and points out many oddities about Miriam’s death:

  • Why did Capitol Hill police, who are trained to be temperate, instead shot to kill an unarmed woman who had a baby in the back seat of her car? No guns or bombs or threatening letters were found in her car. (To that I’ll add this: If police thought Miriam’s careening car was a public hazard, why didn’t they shoot out the car’s tires?)
  • Why did police not follow the usual procedure of notifying the next of kin first? Instead, according to Valerie Carey, police released Miriam’s identification to the public before notifying her family. Valerie found out about her sister from a reporter’s phone call.
  • When the Carey family traveled to Washington, DC, they were told they couldn’t see Miriam’s body but were just shown a photo of her body.
  • To this day, the Carey family has not been given an official notification of Miriam’s death, or of the autopsy report, or how many times she was shot.
  • Why are black race-agitators like Al Sharpton and Charles Rangel silent about Miriam’s shooting death when they normally raise a hue-and-cry about any alleged police mistreatment of blacks? Sharpton’s silence is especially noteworthy because Miriam’s sister, Valerie Carey, is on the executive board of his National Action Network. Did somebody get to Sharpton?
  • Why did the police intimidate and silence Carey family attorney Eric Sanders?
  • Why is Miriam being discredited and portrayed as a mentally-ill, deranged woman when there is no evidence as such? On the contrary, Miriam was highly functional, being a dental hygienist. The only medication she was taking was prescription med for post-partum depression.
  • And the biggest question of all: Why did Miriam Carey drive to Washington, DC that day, and specifically to the White House?

That last question is what prompted Valarie Carey to wonder if her sister’s 18-month-old daughter is Barack Obama’s “love child.”

To answer that question, Valarie Carey and Rev. Manning are demanding a paternity test of Miriam’s daughter, and that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder conduct an investigation into the death of Miriam Carey. Click here for Valarie’s petition.

H/t FOTM’s swampygirl7 for the video.

~Eowyn


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