Ashley Smith frank about her flaws in new book
She gave Brian Nichols meth to put alleged killer at ease
By JENNIFER BRETT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/27/05
Ashley Smith, the woman held hostage for hours after the March 11 Fulton County Courthouse shootings, reveals in a book released today that she gave alleged gunman Brian Nichols drugs on the night he held her captive.
Smith, 27, was thrust into a national media spotlight after talking her way out of Nichols' captivity and then calling police. In "Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero," Smith shares details of her seven-hour ordeal as a hostage in her Duluth apartment, and for the first time tells of giving Nichols drugs.
Nichols asked her for marijuana, she writes, but she had only a small amount of crystal methamphetamine. She thought offering him the drug might curry favor, but she says she refused to take the drug with him.
"I was not going to die tonight and stand before God, having done a bunch of ice up my nose," she writes.
OK, someone smack her!
Hat tip: P6
It's hard to look at pictures like this and say the issues facing Africans on the continent and the US are simply a function of the priorities, principles and practices of white folks...there are too many black folk involved at all levels of this thing for such a simplistic analysis.
Doing the right thing has never the sole responsibility or province of any particular collective defined by "race", gender, religion, ideology, class or creed. Whether your beef is with Condi or Colin or Connerly or the "brothers Willams" (Juan and Armstrong, etc.) or maybe you resent leaders like Min. Farrakhan or Rev. Jackson - and prefer your local leadership they must not become the focal point of our approach to resolving critical issues. These individuals are fallible and our fidelity must be on the principle...and our practice should steer clear of judgment - even as we hold one another accountable.
I submit we can no longer exclusively see with our eyes, listen with our ears or smell with our noses - because the webs of disinformation are so complex (we have to trust our source - sure it's not empirical or replicable/verifiable - but that's beside the point)...it's like that scene in Indiana Jones-Last Crusade, where the cat with the whip is trying to reach the grail and remembers that "only a penitent man shall pass." Keeping it real is an overused saying, but it really means so much - and the biggest part of keeping it real is keeping it simple and keeping it old school and keeping it ancestral.
I don't recommend throwing out the baby in the bathwater of logic, reason and empirical standards. I do recommend expanding and respecting other ways of knowing because so often, things are not what they seem and our rush to judgment (based on the visible, audible or funky) can do more harm than good. With all the criticism heaped upon the shoulders of Ms. Rice, I hope she has the power, integrity and will to change the situation on the ground in the Sudan.