The Story Behind the Story

Back on June 6th, FTVLive told you about the woman that was arrested after a Providence news crew try to ask her questions about her daughter being shot at a graduation party.  

Melisa Lawrence was busted for assaulting the news crew after throwing a rock at the camera, walking around with a baseball bat and then telling her two dogs to go after the Reporter.

In our story on June 6th we wrote: "Did the crew walk up to the woman,  ask her if she wanted to talk and she just started throwing rocks?

Remember, this woman's daughter had been recently shot. It is understandable that she might not want to talk to the media.  

Back to the video of the story, after the woman threw a rock at the camera, why did the news crew stick around? 

From an outsider that wasn't there it appears that there was a lack of tact (on both their ends) in this situation.

We don't for one bit condone the violence that this woman used against the news crew. 

But, this woman was not some criminal (at least not before the news crew showed up) and was not some scam artist that was ripping people off. She was the mother of a daughter that had just been shot. 

After she made it obvious that she didn't want to be interviewed or appear on camera, why did news crew continue to stay at her home with the camera rolling?

Now Lawrence is speaking and she is not defending her actions, but she did explain why she went off. Her story is one that anyone working in TV news should read and maybe think about the next time they knock on a door. 

Lawrence says: Everybody’s like, “Oh, you’re a star now!” I don’t feel like a star. If this is what they call “being a star” then guess what? Let me be the dirt. I’d rather be . . . just a pile of dirt. Because that’s how I feel. I feel like a bag of poop. I feel like nothing. I feel like the scum of the earth.

I’m a single mom. I have no income. I had been in the hospital for a week. And to come home and the next day, the lights get turned off. Then. . . we have the party, my daughter gets shot. Then. . . Monday, I believe, my gas got shut off.

Everything’s just happening to me all at once. I was just under so much stress — like tremendous amounts of stress. That day I just wanted to be left alone. I was already sad because of everything, the whole fact that my daughter got shot and the lights getting turned off, the gas getting turned off. I didn’t want to be bothered with nobody.

I had a very close friend there with me to help me get some stuff together, ’cause we had to leave our home. I’m not allowed to stay in my house. If I stay in my house and I have my children with me, DCF will take my children from me. So in the process of all that, I saw the news reporter. She came walking around the corner. And she’s like, “Hi, Melisa. . . ” I was just like “Nope!” I was like, “No interviews, no interviews.”

When you’re dealing with the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles or whoever — just dealing with victims of a shooting, period — have some compassion. Put yourself in their shoes. You know? Try to get a better understanding of what they’re going through and, like, approach them a different way. If they say “No,” just understand: “No” means “No.”

If a man asks a woman for sex and she says, “No,” and he still goes on and continues to still force her to have sex, he’s going to be prosecuted. But the news can be persistent to try to get information out of you, get you to do any of this stuff, but there’s no prosecution for them. They’re not prosecuted for anything.

I went into a store yesterday, the lady was like, “Oh, aren’t you the lady from TV?” I said, “No.” She was like, “Mmm, yes you are, I could tell by the way you said, ‘No,’ ignorant bitch.” I was like, “OK, don’t want nothin’ out of your store!” And I left.

Am I going to ever be able to get another job? Will I ever be able to get another dog? Those are the things I have to think about. Is anyone going to want to rent an apartment to me? This thing, it might have gotten ABC [ratings]. . . Abbey might have gotten what she wanted. . . a promotion or [a] raise or whatever for the station. But at the end, was it really worth it? Was it really worth it? Basically, this whole story is ruining my life.

All I really want to do now is just stay indoors. I don’t want to go outside. I don’t want to be around nobody except for my family and friends that are supporting me. And that’s all I wanted that day . . . just to be with family and friends and support and [to] go see my daughter. That was all I wanted. I didn’t want to be bothered.

H?T Thephoenix.com