Miriam Carey was shot at 26 times by law enforcement near the Capitol in 2013. Her sister contrasts
Miriam Carey was shot at 26 times by law enforcement near the Capitol in 2013. Her sister contrasts her fate to the treatment of the Jan. 6 rioters.
By
David Montgomery
Jan. 19, 2021 at 12:01 p.m. CST
On Oct. 3, 2013, a dental hygienist from Connecticut named Miriam Carey drove toward the White House with her 13-month-old daughter strapped into a car seat. Carey, 34, pulled up to a security checkpoint, improperly entered the restricted zone, then quickly U-turned out, ignoring Secret Service officers’ commands to stop. Officers hopped in their cars and gave chase down Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
At the foot of the West Lawn of the Capitol, U.S. Capitol Police officers joined the Secret Service with guns drawn, cornering the car on a sidewalk. Carey backed into a squad car, drove briefly on the sidewalk and continued toward Constitution Avenue NW. Officers fired eight shots. Her car was shortly surrounded by officers on Constitution Avenue NE, a block from the Capitol. As Carey tried to back away, a Capitol Police officer and a Secret Service officer each fired nine bullets at the car. Carey was hit once in the arm, three times in the back and once in the head. She died a short while later. Her baby was not physically harmed.
The attack on the Capitol this month — and the focus on the Capitol Police’s response to it — brought the story of Miriam Carey rushing back to my mind. I wrote a detailed look at the case for The Washington Post Magazine in 2014. The seeming restraint that some Capitol Police officers showed the overwhelmingly White mob on Jan. 6 — apparently making way for rioters at some barricades and, in at least one case, taking a selfie — was so different from the use of deadly force against an African American woman with a baby who never came close to breaching the Capitol or the White House.
I wondered how Carey’s relatives were reacting to the attack and if they saw parallels to the death of their loved one. Recently I spoke via Zoom with Valarie Carey, a sister of Miriam’s; we were joined by Eric Sanders, the family’s lawyer. Carey said that when the attack on the Capitol occurred, she wasn’t watching television or following social media. She began getting phone calls and text messages. People sent clips of footage of the attack. “And to be quite honest, when I clicked on [it], I didn’t even look at it for maybe perhaps a few seconds because it’s triggering,” she told me. “When incidents occur in Washington that people make parallels to Miriam, it just creates a great sense of anxiety and hurt and sadness, knowing that she wasn’t given consideration.”
More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/miriam-carey-was-shot-at-26-times-by-law-enforcement-near-the-capitol-in-2013-her-sister-contrasts-her-fate-to-the-treatment-of-the-jan-6-rioters/2021/01/19/0432bdbe-5a51-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html
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MARCH 12, 2015
How a Confused Mom Drove Through a White House Checkpoint and Ended Up Dead
Miriam Carey died in a hail of bullets, her infant in the back seat. Was a Secret Service screwup to blame?
JENNIFER GONNERMAN
At 2:13 p.m. on October 3, 2013—10 months before Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, nine months before Eric Garner was choked in Staten Island—a 34-year-old African American woman drove into a checkpoint in Washington, DC. Her car, a Nissan Infiniti, had Connecticut license plates; her one-year-old daughter sat in the back. Maybe the driver knew this checkpoint leads to the White House. Or maybe not. She did soon appear to realize, however, that she was somewhere that she did not belong: Secret Service officers began hollering at her—”Whoa! Whoa!”—and she turned her car around. When she attempted to drive out of the checkpoint area, an off-duty Secret Service officer placed a section of metal fencing in front of her, even as he held on to what appeared to be a cooler and a plastic bag. She pressed on the gas, knocking the officer and barricade to the ground, and zoomed down Pennsylvania Avenue.
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At 2:13 p.m. on October 3, 2013—10 months before Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, nine months before Eric Garner was choked in Staten Island—a 34-year-old African American woman drove into a checkpoint in Washington, DC. Her car, a Nissan Infiniti, had Connecticut license plates; her one-year-old daughter sat in the back. Maybe the driver knew this checkpoint leads to the White House. Or maybe not. She did soon appear to realize, however, that she was somewhere that she did not belong: Secret Service officers began hollering at her—”Whoa! Whoa!”—and she turned her car around. When she attempted to drive out of the checkpoint area, an off-duty Secret Service officer placed a section of metal fencing in front of her, even as he held on to what appeared to be a cooler and a plastic bag. She pressed on the gas, knocking the officer and barricade to the ground, and zoomed down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Miriam Carey police secret service
A Secret Service officer blocks Miriam Carey’s car with a metal fence. Photo: US Attorney General
There was less traffic than usual this afternoon; the federal government had shut down after Congress had failed to approve a budget on time. Despite the relative quiet, a sense of unease pervaded the capital: 17 days earlier, a former Navy reservist had killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard. Maybe the lingering memory of this mass murder helps explain what happened next. Maybe not. Either way, the driver was now “weaving through traffic and ignoring red lights,” according to a later government account, with Secret Service in hot pursuit. Soon she arrived on the west side of the US Capitol, where she drove the wrong way around Garfield Circle “almost hitting another vehicle head-on.”
She stopped next to a curb, and six officers on foot surrounded her Infiniti. Guns drawn, they yanked on the doors, demanding she step out. Instead, she put the car in reverse, slammed into a police cruiser behind her, then lurched forward onto a sidewalk, forcing officers to scatter. Three officers—two from the Secret Service, one from the Capitol Police—fired eight rounds at her. But she kept going, careening down First Street NW, turning right on Constitution Avenue, police cruisers tailing her, lights spinning and sirens screaming.
Soon she encountered a raised barrier. With nowhere else to go, she pulled the steering wheel to the left, rode onto a grassy median, and plowed into a parked car. Then she shifted into reverse, forcing a Capitol police officer to dart out of the way. That officer and a Secret Service officer each fired nine rounds at the Infiniti. Finally the vehicle stopped, its tires atop the median. The driver was taken to a hospital; her baby was somehow unharmed.
More:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/miriam-carey-whitehouse-rammer-police-death/
Miriam Carey
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