Shooting Victim Claudiare Motley
by Robert A. Waters
In June, 2014, Claudiare Motley returned to his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin to attend his high school reunion. He had good reason to reflect on his life. Married to a former beauty queen who is now an attorney, and with three children, Motley himself was nearing graduation from the Charlotte School of Law in North Carolina.
An article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel describes what happened on the night of June 21: “[Motley] left the Milwaukee Tech High School Class of ‘89 ‘Meet-and-Greet’ Saturday around 1 a.m. He was driving a 2014 Range Rover—the rental car he’d chosen for his vacation with his three children.
“After dropping off a friend at the corner of N. 63rd St. and W. Capitol Drive, Motley peered out the window to make sure the friend made it safely through the door. Then he took out his cellphone to check his email. He almost didn’t notice the black car slowly rolling past him on the left.
“Moments later, Motley said, a second car parked behind him. He saw three passengers through the rear view mirror—a woman and two men—and they were looking at him strangely, he said. Suddenly, one of the men jumped out of the car, approached his window and pointed a gun at him. When Motley floored the accelerator, the man fired a shot through the window.
“‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ Motley, 43, a Milwaukee native who now lives in North Carolina, said Monday. Miraculously, he was able to maneuver the vehicle away from his attackers and drive two miles to St. Joseph’s Hospital, holding the steering wheel with one hand and clutching his jaw with the other in an attempt to stop the blood. When he made it to the floor of the emergency room, he collapsed.”
Motley was lucky to survive. Doctors repaired his shattered jaw, but additional surgeries await him.
Meanwhile, police searched in vain for the shooter.
For several months, Milwaukee had been plagued by a series of violent carjackings. Witnesses said that some of the robbers appeared to be in their early teens and that they were known to shoot first and ask questions later.
The day after Claudiare Motley nearly died, Victoria Davison, a nurse, sat parked outside her home. Suddenly, she was approached by two teens. “We want the keys, the car, everything,” one told her. Then he yelled to the other robber: “Go get the cannon.”
Davison assumed the robber’s intent was to get a large-caliber gun and shoot her. What the carjackers didn’t know was that their victim had a concealed carry license, and a handgun in her gym bag. Davison quickly grabbed the weapon and opened fire. She later told reporters: “I shot the one that was in front of me. The one in the back of me, he said a curse word, and then he looked at his friend, and then he ran off while his friend was on the ground.”
Police quickly realized that the wounded robber was the suspect in Claudiare Motley’s shooting.
They also realized that he’ll never commit another robbery, at least not one where he has to walk. The fifteen-year-old, who can’t be named publicly because of his age, now lies paralyzed in a hospital bed.
Davison, on learning that prosecutors plan to charge the robber as a juvenile, told reporters that he should be charged as an adult. “I mean he’s 15, but he’s making adult decisions. One robbery? Maybe he should be charged as a juvenile because he needs to learn a lesson, but several?” she said. “Even after he shot somebody in the face. Then you are still committing robberies, and that was when he tried to rob me.”
Motley’s wife, Kimberley, had the last word: “It’s unfortunate that this 15-year-old is now a victim,” she said. “But he made my husband a victim with his bad decision. That’s sort of the price you pay when you shoot a man in the face, and try to victimize a woman who has a concealed carry permit.”
Because of Davison’s heroic action, police say they’re close to rounding up the ring of carjackers. If so, they’ll no doubt save many additional victims.
Yet another win for concealed carry laws.
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