A WOMAN AT the centre of a video which went massively viral yesterday has explained why she hit her teenage son when she saw him taking part in the Baltimore riot.
In the clip, filmed by a local news channel, the woman can be seen on a busy street hitting the young man around the head and berating him.
Speaking to CBS, Toya Graham said that she was furious with her 16-year-old son Michael for taking part in the riot because she has worked hard to stop him from getting into trouble.
She said she was “shocked” when she saw people throwing objects at police officers.
“Lo and behold, I turn around and I look at this crowd and my son is actually coming across the street with this hoodie on and a mask,” she said. “At that point, I just lost it.
Graham said that she doesn’t want her son to end up like Freddie Grey, the 25-year-old black man whose death in unexplained circumstances in police custody triggered the riots ”But to stand up there and vandalise police officers, that’s not justice,” she said.
She explained that Michael is her only son. “I’m a single mom and I have six children and I just choose not to live like that no more and I don’t want that for him”.
“You never want to see your child out there doing that. There are some days where I’ll shield him in the house just so he won’t go outside. And I know I can’t do that for the rest of my life – he’s 16 years old, he’s into [being on] the streets”.
She said her son knew he was in trouble as soon as he saw her. “He said to me ‘mom, when I seen you, my instinct was to run’. I’m a no tolerance mother. He knew he was in trouble”.
Baltimore’s police commissioner Anthony Batts praised Graham’s actions, saying he wished there were “more parents who took charge of their kids tonight”.
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