Thursday, November 19, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Firsthand violence unnerves NAACP leader
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
981-3423
Dan Casey
Recent columns
- 82 years of food fit for the King
- At work, on floor, in life: Rick Schmitt had all the right moves
- Murder Hole's reputation built on underground lore
Read Dan's blog
Violent crime that strikes the Roanoke Valley usually occurs in the abstract.
Victims usually are "other people," you know? Rare is the day when it slaps you in the face.
Which is why what happened to Brenda Hale on Sunday sounds shocking when you hear her tell the story.
Hale, 63, is the Roanoke branch NAACP president, and she's no stranger to violence.
At age 7, she witnessed her father fatally shoot her mother in their home in the Hurt Park neighborhood.
Hale came face to face with it as a nurse in the military. And as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she has endured taunts that she should be lynched from self-styled Nazis.
Despite all that, she was still unnerved late Monday afternoon.
She hadn't slept a wink, Hale said, since she found herself involved in a wild car-to-car shooting that ended with one of those cars smashing into hers.
It happened just after 1:30 p.m. on a sunny and warm Sunday.
That morning, Hale had been at Loudon Avenue Christian Church with her cousin, Frances Berry, 62; Berry's granddaughter, Kayla Snowden, 13; Hale's goddaughter, Whitney Zenquis, 22; and Zenquis' daughter, Au Merie, 2.
After church, all of them went over to a close friend's home for an extended family get-together. Then Hale and her entourage headed out for something to eat.
They were in Hale's SUV stopped at a traffic light in the northbound lane of 10th Street Northwest. Hale's signal had just turned green when a red sedan rocketed eastbound on Loudon, headed for the intersection. Hale saw it out of the corner of her eye.
As the red car accelerated, the driver leaned out his window with his left arm pointed in the direction of a small white sedan stopped cater-cornered on southbound 10th Street. In his hand was a pistol.
"He must be a tall man, because he had long arms. He had his upper torso way out the window," Hale said. "He was like boom! boom! boom! -- like that. I think I counted about three."
By this point Hale had a green light and had edged her SUV into the intersection. Then the white car lurched forward, attempted a left onto Loudon -- and smashed into Hale's vehicle.
The good news is, the gunman's aim was rotten. Nobody got shot.
Three of the five people in Hale's car got banged up in the crash, including Berry, who already was plagued with back and knee problems.
A man and woman in the white car jumped out and ran down Loudon, where they took refuge in a nearby home. By then the red car sped south on 10th Street. Hale called 911.
She said police arrived in two minutes or less. "They were fantastic," she said.
"I guess what is so startling is how this man who was doing the shooting had total irregard for other people's lives," Hale said.
Berry was transported by ambulance to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where she was treated for neck and back injuries and released. Hale's other passengers were checked out there, too.
Her SUV was totaled and so was the white car.
Tuesday, police arrested a man whom they believe was the shooter. Dantice Jerrod Perdue, 25, of Roanoke is charged with two felony counts of shooting into a moving vehicle. Police said it stemmed from an earlier argument.
Hale's experience as a nurse has given her an appreciation for how tenuous life is.
"Life can be fleeting," she said. "I know it only takes a second to die.
"But in the community, when you're just going along, happy and carefree and so excited about an extended family get-together -- and how suddenly all that can be snatched away from you ..."
Her voiced trailed off.
