cuchulainn
Member
from the WREG Memphis site
http://www.wreg.com/Global/story.asp?S=1151306
http://www.wreg.com/Global/story.asp?S=1151306
One Victim's Story...
02/25/03
by Jennifer Van Vrancken
Memphis- Patricia Braden recently took a gun safety class. She's a pretty good shot-- and she feels she'll need to be... if the state of Mississippi lets her ex-husband, a convicted murderer, out of prison.
It was 1984, Patricia Braden-- at the time, Patricia Drake, was living at the Turtle Creek apartments in Memphis... hiding from her husband who'd been stalking her for months. She remembers that night like it was yesterday "About that time, there was a knock on the door and I was so agitated and upset I didn't think. I cracked the door and it was him. He shoved the door into my face. In he comes and he has a knife."
That was when Patricia knew, she had to protect herself and her two sons. "I picked up this pistol that my father had given me. I didn't know anything about guns. I wish I had at that point. I was so scared when I pulled it back. It jammed. When it jammed, he just stood there laughing at me because he is standing there with a 12 inch knife and I am standing there with nothing. And I am between him and my kids."
Patricia knew she was in trouble. She told her two little boys to run and hide. "I thought, well, if I grab the knife he can't stab me. I just reached over and grabbed the knife and it cut my fingers off my hand." Somewhere in the scuffle, George Drake was stabbed in the leg and passed out. "I grabbed my kids and slung them over the top of him. I told them to run. We left and ran downstairs to the neighbors and they called the police."
Memphis Police arrested George Drake for the attack, but he made bail. And while Patricia was still recovering... he paid a visit to her father and step-mother in Victoria, Mississippi. "My understanding is that he hit my step mother first and cracked her skull. He shot my father twice in the head. Then he shot her in the head, dragged her down the hall and raped her."
In 1985 George Drake was sentenced to two life sentences for the homicides and time for burglary. Patricia thought two life sentences certainly meant George Drake would no longer be a threat. She knows now, she thought wrong. "Life is not life in the state of Mississippi. Life is ten years."
George Drake has a parole hearing set for November 2005. Patricia says, "They told me at the parole board that they can tell him he couldn't come back to Shelby County. But if he's already killed somebody then he's not going to follow that rule. He is going to come to Shelby County to get even with me. He may not kill me, but his thing was, if he couldn't hurt me then he was going to hurt my family... to hurt me."
Another amazing piece of this story is Patricia says she came across the parole information accidentally after a woman told her how to get in touch with a Mississippi victims' rights group.
Wednesday night on News Channel 3 at 10, we'll tell you some of the things Patricia was shocked to learn about the rights victims have and don't have... and how you can learn from her experience.
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