A (46:40)
We have fun. He buys me a doodle bear. I write I love my daddy all over it. Me and him write messages back and forth throughout the night. We played Uno that night. I remember playing Uno that night. And then we go to sleep and we wake up to guns, lights, police screaming, get out from underneath the bed. My mother's screaming and hollering and she's belligerent. And my sister got hot and she's 12 years old. She steps out of the bed, or 11 12. She steps out of the bed. She didn't have a shirt on or a bra. She was covered up in the blanket. And the police officer standing there staring at my sister. My mother kicks him in between the legs and calls him a pervert and starts screaming and hollering and everything else. It goes completely chaotic. My other sister, she jumps out of the bed and runs over there in between the police and my father laying underneath the bed. There's a police officer in the corner holding the bed up with his gun drawn at my father. And then there's like five or six police to the left. And my sister jumps in between all of that and says, no Robert, you're not going to shoot my daddy. They, he tells the police to get out. And then they hold. He holds us in there for a second and then they take us out and put us in the hallway. And we're sitting at the very end of the hallway and you can look in the window and see the reflection down the back of the hallway and see everything that's going on outside of the room. You see my father open the door. I wouldn't see my father, but my father opens the door and starts throwing stuff out. He threw out a wig, some bullets, a gun, a whole bunch of stuff. And then I remember hearing a bang. And then my mother's screaming and hollering, my children are cold. Are you not gonna give em a jacket or your coat? Cause they had suits and stuff on. The investigators did. Are you not gonna give them your coat? Because they're cold and they wouldn't. So my mama being my mama with no bra on underneath at all, she takes her shirt off, her button up shirt and takes it off. And of course the police get mad about that, but covers us up because we are freezing. And then I see the police run into the room is what I thought like in. But it looked like they were trying to like break into the door. Should I say like you hear a big bang of them trying to break into the door. And then we get taken downstairs. Everyone had been evacuated from their rooms, of course. The whole entire lobby is screaming and hollering and mad at us. The whole time we're upstairs my mother's screaming at us to look down at the pool because we can see everything in the mirror. So that's why they took us downstairs because my mother kept snapping and going off on them because we could see everything that was going on. So they take us to the lobby and there's this random woman who was very sweet, bought us snacks and everything, did not judge us the way everyone else in the lobby was judging us at all. And she come to the police station with us. We got there, the police questioned us, we all said, that's Thomas Mitchell. Thomas Mitchell, Thomas Mitchell. And then I remember being woke up to My mother crying, I'm in her arms, I'm like wrapped around her asleep. And I remember being woke up to my mother crying. And then my mother felt guilty for having us lie or my mother taught me to be not to lie. So I felt guilty and my mother did a little bit for having us lie about who my father was. So I told the police I was sorry myself. And then I remember going to the hospital and sitting in the room with my sisters and my grandfather and my mother coming in and telling us that my father was dead and on life support and that they were going to be pulling the plug soon and that we could go see him. All you saying was his chin. And I got to hold his hand and I'm asking over and over and over again, his hand is warm. How can he be dead? My favorite person growing up, my auntie Uncle Jamie. How my family got there so fast. To me it was a matter of a few hours. But I didn't realize that it was like most of my family was up there by the time my grandmother, my. My grandfather, this is all my mother's family. My uncle, my auntie, Uncle Jamie and my grandmother, my grandfather, my cousins, they all get up to al. To Arkansas and to me it's a matter of just a little bit of time. So I'm thinking they got on an airplane. No, they all drove up there as soon as my mother called them and told them what happened and we got to go see him. And then I remember walking downstairs through the hospital or somewhere holding my auntie Uncle Jamie's hand and talking to him and he's explaining to me that the machines that he's on are what keeping him alive and that they have to unplug the machines because his brain is no longer working. Then I remember going to his funeral. After that I don't remember very much of like all my family come in, they got a hotel. I think we. There was a little teen nightclub in Arkansas in Paragould at that time. And I think we went there, if I'm not mistaken, in those couple of days. And my sisters got in trouble for dancing on the little poles up there, acting like rebellious teens and told on my mother. Tried to make sure it was as normal as possible, tried her hardest. And I was told that the police killed my father because telling a seven year old that their father killed himself is not an easy task. But that's what I was told the night of his funeral. My mother wouldn't let us go in there and see him until she showed up. Not sure why she wanted to be there. I'm guessing, I'm really not. That's my children. Those are my daughters. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. She always was adamant about that, no matter if she was liberated in a bad situation or not. Those are my children and they're going to go with me. So we get there, we wait on my mother and we go in there and see him. I remember walking in there and I asked my cousin to go in with me and she made it a few. She'd already been in there to see my father. She made it a few steps in there and she broke down crying and ran out of the room because she said that it hurt her seeing me having to walk up to my father's casket. Then I remember the day, that was the night of the funeral, the night of the viewing. And then the next day was his funeral. I remember going to the funeral and I have a picture. I'm not sure if I took it at the viewing or at the funeral. I have a picture of me. I've hid it in my house from myself. But standing next to my father's casket, smiling, because that's what you do when you take pictures, you smile no matter what, you smile. And there's pictures of him in his casket. Of course everybody was. Did you see the bullet hole? Did you see the bullet hole? No, you couldn't see it. I even looked because we, you know, we're told he got shot in the head. I'm trying to figure out that's really what happened to my father. And then I told my cousin, my other cousin, I said, hey, look, when they go in there to close that casket, I was so adamant about it when they closed the casket, please make sure he's still in there. Because the seven year old child is thinking that they're going to take his body out of the casket and donate it to science. They're going to take him and put him and start cutting him up and everything else. That's what I'm thinking. So they promised me, he promised me, stood in there while they closed the casket and then we go to the funeral. I remember my family being there. We all gathered to take pictures at the restaurant afterwards or before one where my mother worked at. And they wanted us to leave when they went to bury him to crank down the casket and I wouldn't because yet again, they're about to take my daddy's body out of that thing, you know, and they're about to hurt my daddy. The police done killed my father. I'm not about, you know, I was very adamant about making sure he was okay. Oh. Until the day, of course, they knocked on my door in 2018. And I figured everything out. My father was held on a pedestal.
