Marnette Gordon was doing laundry at home in Minneapolis one summer morning last year when a call came from her 36-year-old son.
She figured her son, Telly Blair, was checking in to see if she wanted a soda from a gas station down the street, where he often went for fuel and snacks.
“Mom, I’ve been shot,” he said. “Call the police!” Marnette, her other son Tamarcus and his 12-year-old daughter rushed to the gas station from their home in the city’s north side, a part of town long beset by violent crime.
Blair’s family came upon his blue 1986 Chevy Caprice at pump No. 5 — beating police and paramedics by a few minutes, they said — only to find him slumped in his car, bleeding from multiple bullet wounds in his chest. A 17-year-old male in an orange hoodie had fired nine rounds from a handgun into Blair’s car before running off.
While an off-duty nurse in scrubs who’d been at the gas station tried to stop his bleeding, Marnette — a heart-transplant recipient — couldn’t bear to watch and stood at a distance. Telly was her caretaker.
“It was just horrible to see him sitting there, waiting on the ambulance,” she told CNN.
The 12-year-old called 911 while watching her uncle struggle to breathe.
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