A small child is sitting in the center lane of a busy road when a large truck comes speeding around the corner, showing no signs of stopping. Suddenly, the child’s mother dashes into the street, pulling her baby from harm’s way at the last minute, saving its life.
She’s hailed as a hero for her courageous, selfless act of love and bravery.
But what if she was also responsible for putting her baby in the middle of the street in the first place, knowing full well that it was only a matter of time before a truck came roaring through? Is she still a hero for saving the baby from the danger she exposed it to?
Such is the case of 33 year old Jessica Arrendale, from Atlanta, GA. Across all forms of media, Arrendale is being celebrated as a hero for saving her infant daughter Cobie’s life, by hiding her in the toilet just before dying from a fatal gunshot wound. On the surface, it certainly seems like the stuff heroes are made out of – her last dying act selflessly going to save her child from a similar fate.
Let’s rewind to Saturday night. According to Jessica’s mother, Teresa Inniello, Jessica and her boyfriend, Antoine Davis, got into a heated argument shortly after midnight. Davis, a former Marine who served in Iraq, became belligerently drunk and abusive, chasing Arrendale, who ran upstairs to grab her baby, and a bat to defend herself.
Arrendale tried to protect herself, but Davis overpowered her. He grabbed the bat and struck her several times, possibly striking the baby. Arrendale then locked herself in a bathroom as Davis got his assault rifle, and, bursting into the bathroom, shot Arrendale in the head while she was still holding Cobie in her arms.
Inniello said, “He shot her and they (police) don’t know how she was able to twist her body and fall literally in the opposite direction.” Instead of falling onto the floor, Arrendale fell over the toilet, dropping Cobie into the water-filled bowl and then covering it with her body. Inniello believes Davis intended to kill both mother and child, but after he was unable to see the child inside the toilet bowl he left the bathroom, walked into the baby’s room and shot himself.
Like so many others, Inniello believes that Arrendale is a hero: “She was the hero, because her last breath was saving the child.” But lost in this heartbreaking story is that Arrendale was the one to endanger her baby in the first place. Their final, tragic argument was not an isolated incident. According to Jessica’s mother, the abuse “had happened many times, but her daughter did not seem able to turn Davis away no matter how often he abused her.” So Jessica made the conscious decision to stay with an abusive man – to let him be around her baby, knowing full well that he had the potential, at any time, of being violent.
Cobie remained in the toilet for 13 hours before she was finally found by police. She is currently at the Children’s Health Care of Atlanta at Scottish Rite Hospital receiving treatment. Along with a traumatic brain injury, Cobie was also suffering from hypothermia.
If you’re a woman who wants to stay with an abusive man, that’s your business and your choice. If you get punched out cold in an elevator by your fiancé, and decide that he’s still the man for you, well, you’re a grown woman – do what you think is right.
But when you’re a mom, your first and foremost responsibility is to protect your child, and that means doing more than just dropping her in a toilet before you die from the result of an abusive relationship. It means leaving that relationship at the first sign of abuse.
Women have to realize that letting an abusive man around their children is a completely selfish act. There’s never an excuse for it, and it’s the children that suffer in the end. Arrendale was a beautiful woman who clearly loved her baby, though to call her act “heroic” is to give her undue credit. Heroes are people that risk their lives in circumstances that they don’t create themselves. Arrendale had to save her baby from danger that she created in the first place by making the selfish decision to stay with, and expose her child to, an abusive boyfriend.
Kids should not pay for their parents mistakes, and heroes don’t knowingly put their kids in danger.