Someone Help Her

Non fiction based on a personal experience - guns and killing

Someone Help Her

by Tee M.

Is it too morbid to tell you this is a true story?

It was a summer evening, just past seven. My husband and I were visiting our daughter in Atlanta. She lived in a gated community, on the third floor of a quiet apartment building. She had just come in from one of her graduate classes when it happened.

The sound came first—sharp, echoing, impossible to mistake. Gunfire.

Our door opened, and she rushed in, dropping her bag to the floor, kicking off her shoes.
“Someone’s been shot,” she said. “Call 911. I’m going to help.”

Through the open door, I could already hear it—a man’s voice, hoarse and desperate, crying out again and again, “Someone help her!”

Gunfire.
Yelling.
And my daughter running toward it.

There’s a split second when fear and instinct fight each other. Part of me wanted to grab her, hold her back. The other part knew I couldn’t. She’d already made the choice.

She had lived four years in a firehouse while studying at the University of Maryland. She’d been an EMT officer. Running toward danger wasn’t new to her. But usually, there were sirens close behind. This time, there weren’t. And the silence between those gunshots stretched far too long.

Dozens of neighbors were already calling 911. After giving the operator what little I knew, I hung up. My husband and I went after her.

We walked straight into a murder-suicide—and an attempted murder.

One man lay just inside the doorway, surrounded by blood, half his skull gone. He was still holding the gun. Across the room, a woman lay motionless. No pulse. My daughter was crouched beside another man, shaking and incoherent, trying to make sense of what had happened.

While she spoke to him, I took the gun from the man on the floor and pushed it out of reach. The magazine was empty. Later, we learned what had unfolded: the man on the floor had tried to shoot the one my daughter was helping—four times—and missed. His first shot killed the woman. Then he turned the gun on himself.

It was a love triangle. The woman, married to the shooter, had been living with the surviving man—the one my daughter called Mr. Hysterical.

It took more than an hour for the ambulance and police to arrive. By then, my daughter had disarmed the surviving man, and my husband had quietly gathered the other weapons from a coffee table and moved them out of sight.

When the investigators finally came, they separated us for questioning. Each of us told our story again and again. It was nearly midnight when new detectives arrived and asked for handwritten statements.

Every one of them had something to say about my daughter—how reckless she’d been, how foolish.

By the time the last one started his lecture, I’d had enough.
I told him he was wasting time trying to teach me how to mother a twenty-four-year-old woman. My daughter had assessed the danger and made her choice—one I had no control over.

The man I’d taken the gun from died a few days later. The woman was gone on arrival. And the man my daughter had helped—poor soul—never recovered. He called us a few times in the years that followed, until the PTSD took hold. Eventually, he stopped calling.

That was a long night.
And I doubt I will ever forget it.

⸻

Last night, I was reminded of it.

At about four in the morning, I woke to the sound of gunfire. For a moment, I thought it was a dream. Then, twenty minutes later, there was a knock at the door—a police officer explaining they were searching the neighborhood, looking for a shooter. His flashlight beam slid across the porch, catching the trees in white flashes.

I’d heard only two shots, and one cry. I couldn’t tell if it was human or animal. For nearly three hours, officers combed the area. Their radios cracked through the dark like insects buzzing in glass.

By afternoon, my neighbor came by with news. Her son works at the local police station. The shooting, he said, was between high school students arguing over a girl. The jealous boy shot her new boyfriend. The shooter was caught.

I listened, numb, and thought about that night in Atlanta—the sound of my daughter’s footsteps running toward someone else’s tragedy. The smell of cordite. The quiet after.

Has the world gone mad?
Or has it always been like this, and we’re only now awake enough to hear it?

That was another long night.
And once again, I doubt I’ll ever forget it.


Author Note:
I mostly write fiction and a little literary nonfiction based on true stories. My work is drawn from the fault lines between courage and fear, exploring the moments when ordinary lives meet extraordinary choices—and what lingers after the sirens fade.