Posted by Dave on March 14, 2005 at 18:35:19:
In Reply to: Wow. God at work. posted by Dave on March 14, 2005 at 18:20:17:
: This is pretty amazing. It reminds me of something that might happen in a Flannery O'Connor story, actually. O'Connor, of course, believed that grace works even in the lives of "evildoers." What a story. - Dave
: 'I believe God brought him to my door'
: Taken hostage in her home, Duluth woman shared her life, faith
: By BILL RANKIN, DON PLUMMER
: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
: Published on: 03/14/05
: Just two days after moving into her Duluth apartment, Ashley Smith is up late unpacking.
: About 2 a.m. Saturday, the 26-year-old runs out of cigarettes and heads to a convenience store to buy a pack of Marlboro Light Menthols.
:
: When she returns, she sees a man in a truck waiting outside her door. She had seen the man earlier, but didn't think much of it. Seeing him again puts her on high alert.
: She gets out of her car and shuts the door.
: She hears the truck door close about the same time. Fear rises in her.
: Holding her key in her hand, she makes her way to her front door and senses his presence. As she slides her key into the lock, she turns to face the man from the truck. She screams. He pokes a gun into her ribs.
: "Stop screaming," he demands. "I won't hurt you if you stop screaming."
: She fears the worst that she will be raped and killed.
: "Do you know who I am?" he asks.
: He is wearing a dark blazer beneath a red ski parka but no shirt. He has a new UGA cap on his head.
: She doesn't know him.
: He removes the cap, showing his shaved head.
: "Now do you know who I am?" he asks again.
: She recognizes him now: Brian G. Nichols. She begins to tremble.
: "I won't hurt you," he tells her.
: He takes her into the bathroom, places her in the tub and sits on a small chair, holding a gun.
: He leaves her to check for other people in the apartment. When he returns, he tries again to reassure her. "I don't want to hurt anyone else," he says.
: He worries that her screams could bring too much attention. "If you scream, the police will come. There will be a hostage situation," he says. "I'll have to kill you and kill myself."
: He binds her with masking tape and carries her into the bedroom, where he restrains her with more tape, an electrical cord and some curtains. He makes no sexual advance.
: "I just need to relax," he tells her.
: He needs a shower and leads her as she hops back to the bathroom. He sits her on the chair and drapes a towel over her head for modesty. He places his guns on the counter and showers.
: After he finds some fresh clothes a T-shirt from a bar where she once worked and the trousers of a former boyfriend. He seems to be calmer.
: He unbinds her and they sit in her living room.
: "I've had a really long day," he says.
: He offers her some faint explanation maybe his first to account to anyone of how he had spent this long day.
: "I feel like I'm a warrior. The people of my color have gone through a lot."
: But he says he's had enough. "I don't want to hurt anybody anymore," he tells her. "I don't want to kill anybody.
: "I want to rest."
: The atmosphere becomes more normal, as normal as it could be.
: Smith asks if he would mind if she reads.
: Nichols says OK. She gets the book she'd been reading, "The Purpose Driven Life." It is a book that offers daily guidance. She picks up where she had left off the first paragraph of the 33rd chapter.
: "We serve God by serving others. The world defines greatness in terms of power, possessions, prestige and position. If you can demand service from others you've arrived. In our self serving culture with its me first mentality, acting like a servant is not a popular concept."
: He stops her and asks her to read that again.
: They talk and lose track of time. They look at her family photos. "Who's this?" he asks, pointing to a picture. "Who's this?"
: She tells him about her family. Her husband died in her arms four years ago after he had been stabbed in a knife fight in Augusta, her hometown. She has a 5-year-old daughter.
: She implores him not to kill her because that would leave her daughter without a mother or a father.
: She tells him she is supposed to visit her daughter Saturday morning about 10 a.m. at Hebron Baptist Church in Dacula. She hadn't seen her in two weeks. "She's expecting to see me," she tells him. "She's already been through a lot in her life."
: Smith shows Nichols her husband's autopsy report. "That's what a lot of people will have to go through now, because of what you've done," she tells him. "You need to turn yourself in. No one else needs to die, and you're going to die if you don't."
: Smith asks Nichols how he feels about what he did what about the families of the victims?
: She senses a change. "He wasn't a warrior anymore," she recalled later.
: "You can go in there right now, pick up that gun and kill me," he tells her. "I'd rather you do it than the police."
: He talks about his mother, who is in Africa on business, and wonders what she must be thinking about her son.
: They sit watching the TV news of the shooting spree. The screen fills with the story of his attack on Cynthia Hall, the 51-year-old deputy he had overpowered Friday morning to begin his rampage.
: "I didn't shoot her," Nichols interjects. "I hit her really hard. Lord, I'm sorry. . . . I hope she lives."
: He sees himself on the broadcast. "I can't believe that's me," he says.
: Nichols later pulls out the badge and driver's license of David Wilhelm, the U.S. customs agent whom he is accused of killing hours before. He hands them to Smith.
: Smith looks at the license and tells Nichols that Wilhelm was 40 years old. "He probably has a wife and kids," she says.
: "I didn't want to kill him," Nichols says. "He wouldn't do what I asked him to do. He fought me, so I had to kill him."
: Smith tells Nichols he must surrender.
: "I deserve a bullet in the back," he tells her.
: No, Smith says, but he must be held accountable for what he did.
: Smith tells Nichols his life still has a purpose. By ministering to other inmates, "you can go to jail and save many more people than you killed."
: As the night wears on, Smith begins to feel her chances improve.
: Nichols tells her he will let her go to see her daughter later in the morning.
: Around 6:15 a.m., Nichols says that before sunrise he needs to move the truck he is accused of stealing from Wilhelm.
: She agrees to follow him in her car. He leaves the guns under her bed.
: As they drive, Smith thinks about calling 911 on her cellphone, but she decides against it. She fears police will come and surround them. There'd be a shootout.
: Nichols ditches the truck off Buford Highway, about two miles from the apartment complex.
: "Wow, you didn't drive off," Nichols says as he gets into her car. "I thought you were going to."
: She drives him back to her apartment. She no longer doubts that she will be set free.
: Back at the apartment, Nichols is hungry. She cooks him eggs and pancakes, gives him fruit juice. They have breakfast together.
: Nichols asks when she needs to see her daughter. At 10:00 a.m., Smith responds. It'd be good if she could leave at 9:30 to get there.
: Smith washes the dishes and gets ready to leave.
: Nichols asks her to come visit him in jail. "You're an angel sent from God to me," he tells her. "I want to talk to you again. Will you come see me?"
: She tells him she will.
: "I'll be back in a little while," she says.
: Nichols gives her an odd look that makes Smith wonder whether he believes her.
: At the door, he hands her $40. "Take it," Nichols says. "I don't have any need for it."
: Nichols holds an electronic stud finder he took from Wilhelm's truck and asks if he can hang some of her pictures or curtains while she's gone.
: Smith tells him to do whatever he likes.
: As she walks into the bright, warm daylight, Smith begins to tremble. She drives to a stop sign and dials 911. She tells the dispatcher that Nichols is in her apartment.
: Within minutes, a Gwinnett police SWAT team swarms outside Smith's apartment. Nichols holds out a white piece of cloth and surrenders. Smith was watching from behind a van parked across the parking lot.
: Sunday night, after recounting her time with Nichols, Smith said she believes there was some purpose to his finding her.
: "I believe God brought him to my door so he couldn't hurt anyone else," she said.
For those of you who might not be familiar with the story, Nichols was an inmate about to go on trial for a violent rape here in Atlanta. Last Friday, as he was about to be led into the courtroom, he overpowered the deputy and took her gun. He then walked into the courtroom and killed the judge, the court recorder, and another deputy. He somehow managed to escape the courthouse and went on the run, killing anyone who got in his way. He showed up Saturday night at a woman's apartment in Northeast Atlanta (Gwinnett County), where he held her hostage until Sunday morning. While being held hostage by this man who had killed four people already, she found the presence of mind to talk to him about God. Here's more of her story:
'I feel like I met him for a reason'
By MICHELLE HISKEY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/14/05
Ashley Smith's family worried that her niceness made her a doormat.
The 26-year-old widowed mother often believed the best about other people, to a fault. That trait had led to some bad decisions about men, and she had only recently resolved to go to school, get a job and make enough money so her 5-year-old daughter could come live with her again.
But when Brian G. Nichols came to the door of Smith's apartment in Duluth early Saturday morning, on the run from a shooting rampage that had killed four people, Smith's gentleness and inner strength became her salvation. They contributed to Nichols' peaceful surrender seven hours later.
Smith and her family say she saw in Nichols a hurting human being who was looking for hope.
She had wrestled with the question of life's purpose since the stabbing death of her husband in August 2001, and had concluded, through valleys of depression and uncertainty, that to move on she had to believe that God had a plan for her life.
That plan, she and family members said Sunday night, brought Nichols to the door of a woman who could always see a flicker of promise in someone else. "An angel," Smith said Nichols called her.
Her levelheadedness allowed her to control her fear as he stuck a gun into her side. It kept her from panicking when he bound her and put a towel over her face as he showered.
Her desire to live so her daughter would have at least one parent gave her presence of mind. She talked to Nichols about faith, read an inspirational book aloud and told him that he could have hope and a future despite his crimes. She also cooked him breakfast before her midmorning release.
Her eye for seeing a shred of goodness made her great at things like turning attic trash into creative table toppers. She puts sticky notes up daily with different inspirational thoughts. Her sensitivity and down-to-earth nature, though, let people take advantage of her.
"She gives everyone the benefit of the doubt," her aunt Kim Rogers, 51, of Martinez said. "Ashley can be too gullible. Her big heart leaves her vulnerable. . . . She can be too trusting."
"I have seen her before in situations where it's come out like she's a wimp," her mother, Mary Davis, 49, of Norcross said. "But I have to give her credit when it comes down to situations where she's dealing with normal people one to one, everyday people. . . . She never holds a grudge, but she has a tendency to get walked over by men."
'You're a hero now'
Bill Davis, her mother's husband, was proud of how she handled what for most people would have been a nightmare.
"When she got done with the FBI, we went on the porch for a smoke, and I said, 'You've made a lot of bad mistakes and you've goofed off a lot, but you're a hero now,' " Davis said. "The most amazing thing is that you didn't make a bad move. You made it through the night with a cold-blooded killer, and you probably saved the life of more innocent people. And she burst into tears she was so happy."
Smith had struggled emotionally after her husband's death, not making enough to afford her rent and "not wanting to live but not wanting to die, either," said her mother.
Smith moved in with her mother; daughter Paige stayed behind with aunt Kim.
In Atlanta, Smith took a series of jobs that included working for a construction company and waiting tables. She could be a slacker, and one restaurant fired her because she didn't show up.
Earlier this year, relatives said, Smith decided to move on. She took a two-bedroom apartment in Duluth with a roommate. She applied for a federal Pell Grant to help pay for classes at the Georgia Medical Institute, leading to a medical assistant's job, hopefully in sports medicine.
She was a waitress at Barnacles, a Gwinnett County sports bar.
Last week, she had a second interview for a part-time job at a hair transplant clinic that she hoped would be an entr้e into the medical field.
Last week, she was moving into a one-bedroom place in the back of the apartment complex, a location that her relatives thought might not be very secure. An avid smoker, Smith took a break from unpacking about 2 a.m. Saturday to get cigarettes at a nearby convenience store when Nichols accosted her.
Family life as usual
The family is large and close. Smith's grandfather Dick Machovec, an ex-Marine and former headmaster at Augusta Christian School, is the patriarch. His wife, Ann, is his quiet partner, and has never has raised her voice, the family said.
They have three children and 12 grandchildren, and several family members attend school and compete in sports in Gwinnett County and at Georgia Tech. Several family members watched Smith's cousin Eve Machovec win two track titles at Dacula High School the morning that Nichols released Smith.
Paige Smith was born 11 weeks early, and her survival, Smith said, was another crisis that taught her about life's purpose.
While her mother was held hostage, Paige was where she usually is in the care of Smith's aunt in Martinez. Saturday morning, she took Paige to a children's program at Hebron Baptist Church in Gwinnett County. Smith persuaded Nichols to release her so she could meet her daughter at the church as scheduled.
The family helped raise Ashley after her parents split when she was 1. She graduated from high school in Augusta, at 5-foot-8 and 130 pounds, a basketball player who, her mother said, was honored as athlete of the year. Smith turned down a college scholarship to attend Augusta College. She left after one quarter, her mother said, when she met Mack Smith, a trim carpenter.
In a quarrel with three old friends at an apartment complex, Mack Smith was stabbed to death as Ashley Smith watched from afar. She could not identify the killer, and the family said it remains unsolved. Her husband died in her arms.
Though her faith since then has sometimes wavered, it helped her through her ordeal as a hostage, her family said.
"This whole family thinks this is a God thing," her aunt said. When she first talked to Smith after the ordeal, her aunt recalled saying, "This affirms that God is not finished with you, but he has a tremendous purpose for you. . . . You're a cat with nine lives."