Baltimore ‘Mother of the Year’ Speaks Out about Viral Video: To 'Vandalize Police Officers' is 'Not Justice'

Barbara Boland | April 29, 2015
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“To stand up there and vandalize police officers, that’s not justice,” says Baltimore mom Toya Graham who was hailed on social media as “mother of the year” after she was caught in a viral video smacking her son upside-the-head.

She describes the moment when she saw her only son in the crowd of rioters “with this hoodie on and a mask” saying she “just lost it” “not even thinking about cameras or anything like that.”

“That’s my only son and at the end of the day I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray,” said Graham in an interview with CBS News.

She says she was “shocked” and “angry” because “you never want to see your child out there doing that.”

Graham’s actions even earned the commendation of Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts late Sunday night who said he wished he had more parents like her.

From CBS local:

“If you saw in one scene, you had a mother who grabbed their child who had a hood on his head and she started smacking him on the head because she was so embarrassed… I think these were youth coming out of the high school and they thought it was cute to throw cinder blocks at the police department and address it that way.”

Her son Michael told her on the way home that when he saw her, his instincts were to run. “I’m a no-tolerant mother, everyone that knows me knows I don’t play that,” said Graham. “He knew; he knew he was in trouble.”

Graham has to “shield” her son from daily violence in Baltimore’s chaotic West side – in August, 2014 three shots were fired outside her home in the middle of the night. She checked on her children and then went outside to help. She didn’t recognize the victim, who died before he could be taken to the hospital.

"A couple of young ladies kept towels on his wounds," Graham told ABC2 at the time.

“Soon we're not even going to be able to walk out of our doors,” she told them.

From ABC News:

“That was somebody's child, and it's real overwhelming that somebody takes somebody's life like that and he was just left there.”

Graham is assistant manager at Powell Recovery Center, an in-patient alcohol and drug treatment center in Baltimore that manages crisis and halfway housing.

Asked if mothers could have prevented the violence currently engulfing Baltimore after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody, Graham said she “thinks so” but added that “we don’t know” where the mothers were. “A lot of mothers have to provide for their children,” she said.

“I’m a single mom and I have six children, and I just choose not to live like that no more,” Graham told the reporter. “I don’t want that for him.”

She admitted her son is “into the streets” but added: “Is he a perfect boy? No he’s not. But he’s mine.” 

 

 

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