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What makes the story of Antoinette Tuff so compelling –
but only part of it. Tuff is, of course, the bookkeeper at Ronald
McNair Discovery Learning Center in Decatur, Ga., whose work talking
shooter Michael Brandon Hill (pictured below) into surrendering to police Tuesday was
captured live on a stunning 911 tape that’s gone viral. The fascination
at the heart of Tuff’s tale, the reason it’s riveting, is the way she
used compassion and empathy to disarm a mentally ill man intent on
killing. “Was the potential there to have another Sandy Hook?
Absolutely,” the local police chief told reporters as he praised Tuff.
In this story, the only thing that stopped a bad guy with a gun was a
good woman with a heart. Or to entirely rewrite Wayne LaPierre’s dumb
Manichaean NRA propaganda: The only thing that stopped an emotionally
damaged, despairing and unloved young man with 500 rounds of ammunition
was a compassionate woman sharing her own story of damage and despair,
and telling him she loved him.
Hill, a mentally ill 20-year-old, seemed convinced the police would
kill him because he shot at them, and he might have been right. But Tuff
tells him she’ll protect him by telling them he hasn’t hurt her, and he
didn’t actually hit anyone he shot at.
We can only pray that a non-African American woman faced with a heavily armed,
mentally ill young black man would have done the same thing.
