The nation is exploding in coast-to-coast protests in the wake of the recent killings of unarmed black men and a 12-year-old boy by white police. Of great concern as well is the failure of two grand juries to indict the officers involved with two of those recent deaths.
In stark contrast to those events is the recent story of a white woman in Tennessee who donned body armor and began shooting at random people, including police officers, and lived to tell about it.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported that on December 26th Julia Shields, 45, was seen by a neighbor who lived up the street from her Hixson neighborhood home driving past her house “holding a gun as if it were a cigarette.”
The neighbor, Jennifer Clouse, stated that
She was just casually holding a gun, and wearing a baseball hat. It was crazy. … This is a pretty quiet area. I saw the gun and said to myself, ‘I’m going to go inside.
She went on to tell Times Free Press that she heard sirens shortly after entering her home and observed multiple police cars chasing Shields down the hill.
Police officials to told the Times Free Press that Shield had been wearing body armor while driving through the neighborhood firing multiple shots a people and cars out the window of her own vehicle.
Officers found two people who said they were at a stop sign when a woman pulled up in a dark-colored sedan and fired shots into their vehicle, hitting and disabling the radiator.
Then more calls reported a woman pointing a firearm at people as she passed them in her car, and that she fired at another vehicle in the same area. Police found Shields sitting in her vehicle in the Stuart Heights Baptist Church Parking lot on Hixson Pike, the release stated.
According to a follow-up article by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, after a brief chase by police down Highway 153 and Hixson Pike,
she pulled her car right up to a police cruiser — her driver’s side door to his — and pointed the weapon at him.
Officer Rick Engle was blocked inside his vehicle, windows down. Gun drawn, he ordered the woman, identified by police as Julia Shields, to drop it.
She did. The standoff lasted only seconds.
“She was perilously close to severe injury or death — as were my officers,” Lt. Craig Joel said. “But ultimately, through their calm and training, and through her compliance, she lived.
It remains unclear why she started the shooting spree and Shields has been charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder, seven counts of aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, felony evading arrest and felony reckless endangerment.
Shields is being held at the Hamilton County Jail and her first court appearance was scheduled on January 5 before General Sessions Judge Gary Starnes.
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