By Ramon Antonio Vargas
(The Guardian)
A teenage boy who was killed in a mass shooting that erupted at his sister’s 16th party in Alabama over the weekend died as he pushed the birthday girl to safety, his sister said.
In an interview with CNN, Alexis Dowdell described her final words to her 18-year-old brother, Philstavious “Phil” Dowdell, as he died on Saturday night along with three other teens.
“Don’t give up on me,” she recalled telling him. “You’re going to make it. You’re strong.”
The violence at Alexis Dowdell’s celebration in Dadeville, a city with a population of about 3,000 approximately 60 miles northwest of Montgomery, left more than 30 other people injured. It also reignited calls – including from Joe Biden – to restrict access to guns capable of inflicting such bloodshed.
Alexis Dowdell said she spent much of her last day with her older brother sitting on his bed fretting about the party she had been planning for months. A successful high-school football wide receiver, Phil Dowdell reportedly responded by cheering his sister up, getting her to laugh and promising to make sure she enjoyed herself at her celebration.
The first sign of trouble that Alexis and her mother, LaTonya Allen, detected at the gathering was a rumor that someone had brought a gun into the venue, the BBC reported, citing a separate interview with the family that hosted the party. Allen said she turned the lights on, walked to the DJ booth and requested that any guests with guns leave. Phil Dowdell went to Alexis’s side to protect her if necessary.
The party resumed, and gunshots soon rang out. Phil Dowdell immediately pushed Alexis Dowdell to the ground, and the siblings became separated in the ensuing chaos, the sister told CNN and the BBC. After escaping the dance studio, she realized Phil had been shot, and she went back in to be with him as he lay on the floor bleeding.
“Everybody just broke down crying,” Alexis Dowdell said to CNN. Phil tried to say something in response to Alexis as she comforted him in his last moments, according to Allen, who described being struck by two bullets without immediately realizing it. But Alexis Dowdell said first responders soon arrived and pronounced him dead.
“It’s a nightmare that I don’t wish on any parent,” Allen said to CNN of the scene she had to endure. She was struck by two bullets herself. “To go in and to see my baby lying there in a pile of blood – that was the worst thing that I could experience in my life.”
The three others killed alongside Phil Dowdell were Marsiah Collins, 19; Shaunkivia “Keke” Smith, 17; and Corbin Holston, according to a statement from the local coroner. Investigators had not announced any arrests in their killings as of Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, state law enforcement officials did not specify whether every one of the surviving injured victims had been shot. But CNN reported that at least 15 teenagers were being treated for bullet wounds at one local hospital, according to an official at the facility.
The shooting ended Phil Dowdell’s plans to play for the football team at Jacksonville State University after his upcoming graduation. He would have been helping the Jacksonville State’s Gamecocks as they prepared to move up to the NCAA’s top flight for the first time in the team’s 119-year history, which counts at least 25 conference championships and claims one second-division national title.
As of Tuesday morning, there have been 164 mass shootings in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive resource website. The archive defines a mass shooting as one with four or more victims who were killed or wounded.
Biden was among the most prominent figures to react to the killings in Dadeville. As he has done repeatedly after mass shootings during his time at the White House, the US president again urged Congress to pass legislation holding firearms manufacturers liable for violence committed with their products; banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines; and requiring safe storage of firearms as well as background checks for gun sales.
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