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| Rape victim shot by police
From: here Quote:
Teen told mother she'd been raped
Ashley MacDonald's mom describes frantic moments before shooting.
By KIMBERLY EDDS
The Orange County Register
HUNTINGTON BEACH – Lisa Guy spent the first few hours of Aug. 25 sprinting through her neighborhood, pounding on doors in the dark. Ashley, her teenage daughter, wasn't back from a late visit to a friend's house. Guy was desperate to find her.
It wasn't until just after 6 a.m. that Ashley MacDonald, 18, came rushing up the stairs to their apartment. She was wild-eyed and scared. MacDonald gripped a folding pocket knife.
"Mom, they date-raped me and drugged me," Guy remembered her daughter saying.
Less than three hours later MacDonald was dead – shot multiple times by two Huntington Beach police officers who said the teenager lunged at them with the knife.
In her first interview since her daughter's death, Guy talked about her last moments with MacDonald, what set her daughter off in an emotional rant and how the police responded.
Sheriff's homicide investigators are tracking down possible leads in Oregon, including trying to find a man who spent time with MacDonald the night before she was killed.
"There are some conflicting stories over whether she was raped," said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Department, which is handling the investigation. "We are trying to sort that out. That's going to be a very important factor in the investigation."
As Guy tried to hug her frightened daughter in the hallway that morning, MacDonald flailed at her with the knife, slashing her on the wrist. Bleeding, she tried to comfort her daughter with baby talk as MacDonald talked of rape.
"She said she kept nodding in and out of it and she kept waking up in all of these different positions."
MacDonald, who according to her mother and friends didn't use drugs, managed to leave and walk a block back to her apartment.
"They were doing horrible things to her, and she got herself out of it," Guy said. "She was so proud of herself that she got away."
Guy ran down the street to a pay phone to call a friend to help. She rushed back up the stairs to find her daughter running down another flight of stairs.
"She was gone," Guy said. "I lost her."
Details of the autopsy and toxicology tests are expected to be released in the next few weeks – after Sheriff Mike Carona reviews the results and signs off on an official cause of death. A rape examination was also done.
Guy was standing in her bathroom when she heard the police gunshots.
"I knew they were for her. I couldn't see it, but I just knew they were for her," Guy said.
As she ran down the complex hallway, police officers coming up the stairs met her. For hours they refused to let her back into her apartment, even to get her medication. Guy was falsely imprisoned, her attorney, Jerry Steering, alleged.
A Huntington Beach police spokesman said the department wouldn't comment on the sheriff's ongoing criminal investigation. A sheriff's spokesman said he did not know why Guy was not allowed back in her apartment.
"I kept asking: 'When can I see Ashley? Is she all right? When can I see my daughter?' " Guy said. "They told me she was fine."
MacDonald's body lay at Huntington Beach Hospital for hours before an officer broke the news to her mother.
"I was going to tear them up," Guy said. "I was going to tear their throats out. It didn't mean anything to them. But she was my baby."
"I saw her. I saw how she was," Guy said. "She wasn't a threat to anyone."
"She was in a terrible situation, and she needed help," Guy said. "But they didn't help her. They took her out."
It had been a rough run for the mother and daughter. Guy was on disability. With MacDonald's father out of the picture, they were the only family they had. Two hearts, they called it.
Things had started to turn around. They had just celebrated the one-year anniversary of Guy's struggle to recover from a lifetime of alcohol and cocaine addiction. MacDonald stayed with friends during her mother's hospital rehab and helped nurse her back to health, making sure she ate – and stayed on the wagon. They were a team.
Now Guy sits in her apartment alone, without MacDonald to crack a joke or read her to sleep from one of her treasured Harry Potter books.
MacDonald spent hours teaching herself German so she could understand the lyrics of her favorite band, Rammstein. And to connect to her German roots on her mother's side.
Two tickets to this month's Oktoberfest celebration in Huntington Beach sit on Guy's kitchen table – one for her, one for MacDonald.
|  There are no words to describe this article. It's crazy, confusing, and sad at the same time.
It's not easy to come up with a headline title. But if anyone has a better title suggestion, let me know.
Last edited by Lain; 09-14-2006 at 10:28 AM.
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