Personal experience: My mother’s encounter with police illustrates Black America’s trauma

By Lyriq Robinson
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer

My mother, Carletta Robinson, arrived at a house in Germantown, parked her car, and awaited her Lyft passenger. She noticed another parked car but thought nothing of it. Two minutes later, a young man left the house.

“The house was dark and had no lights on,” she said. “He actually popped out of nowhere and scared the living crap out of me.”

She noticed his rapid movements as he rushed from his house to her vehicle. Valentino Pritchett, a 18-year-old Black male, got into her automobile seconds later.

“When he crouched into my car, something hard and metal hit the bottom of my floor,” she said. “I joked and asked if he was trying to break my car and he said ‘no ‘ma’am’ and kind of smiled a bit.”

“He was a polite kid,” she said.

As a Black woman with two sons, my mother often feels a certain level of connection with young Black men in America. She worries about my brothers and their safety on a daily basis.

It was October 23, 2018 and earlier that morning, Montgomery County Police said they identified Valentino Pritchett as a suspect in the death of 20-year-old Stephen Frazier after he was shot and killed.

The two started their journey to Frederick. It was a long ride, but my mom wanted the money. As she backed out of the driveway and drove down the block, she noticed a cop car in her rearview mirror. She instantly tensed up.

Nearly two seconds later, she was hit by police cars on all sides, destroying her car and enclosing her and preventing her from moving.

Suddenly five different police officers rushed to her car, guns drawn, yelling at her to put her hands in the air. She was shocked and afraid. She looked in the rearview mirror to look at the young man and he had crouched down, disappearing from her vision.

“The f***!? What did you do?” she screamed.

Not knowing what was going on, the only other words she could mutter to the police were that she was a Lyft driver.

All of a sudden, gunshots. Valentino shot himself in the back of my mother’s car.

Lyft drivers face inherent risks since they never know who they are inviting in their car.

“When I look back, I wonder if there was something that I could have done different,” my mom said. “Initially, it was surreal. Like a TV show. I wouldn’t turn around to look at the body. After I heard the three shots I was screaming and panicking. I had to climb out of the passenger side because the cars pinned me in.”

When I read the article, the media didn’t even mention my mother or Lyft and made it seem like she was his getaway driver.

“They wanted to keep their name out of the news,” said my mom. “So Lyft paid me a year’s salary.”

My mother’s frustration wasn’t with Lyft or the young man who took his life in her backseat. Instead, it was with the police system.

“Why did the police put me in this position?” she asked. “They knew he was there. They told me they were parked outside of his house, watching his every movement. They could have detained him before he even got in the car.”

I felt for my mother. If she had been a white person, would they have assumed she was his getaway driver? Would they have still put her life at risk?

My mother’s experience and others like it threatens the security of Black people in this country,.

“If the kid had held his gun up at any point, they would have lit my car up, killing an innocent person,” my mom said. “And gotten away with it.”

I have a disdain for the police. My post-traumatic stress kicks in when I hear sirens and see police based on my own personal experiences with them. Hearing what my mother went through was just another emotional trigger for me.

When my mom asked the police why they put her in that position, they couldn’t respond or take responsibility for what happened. Instead, they said, “it’s just the law.”