Baltimore ‘Mom of Year’ feared for protesting son

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The Baltimore mother whose videotaped smack-down of her protesting son captured the eyes of the media world said she only chastised him in the streets out of love and fear, and because her maternal instincts kicked into high gear.

“I was shocked,” said Toya Graham, the Baltimore single mother of six who has been featured in various media reports, including WND, in the last day for her very public dress-down of her son, 16-year-old Michael, whom she discovered walking across the street with a rock in his hand.

“I recognized the baggy sweatpants … he did have a face mask on and we made eye contact,” Graham told CBS News.

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“I was angry,” she continued, explaining her initial reaction when she saw her son on television, CBS News reported. “You never want to see your child out there doing that. At that point, I just lost it.”

Graham’s actions, captured on video, included smacking him in the head, grabbing hold of his black hoodie and pulling him through the streets while a crowd of protesters and bystanders watched.

“My whole intention was to get my son and have him be safe,” Graham told CBS News.

For that, she’s been dubbed by the media as “Mom of the Year.”

“He gave me eye contact. And at that point, you know, not even thinking about cameras or anything like that. That’s my only son and at the end of the day I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray,” Toya Graham said, referencing the 25-year-old man who died after mysteriously sustaining severe spinal injuries in police custody earlier in the month. His death has sparked protests throughout the city, with tensions boiling over Monday.

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And her son’s reaction?

“He knew he was in trouble,” she said, the New York Post reported. “He said, ‘When I seen you, Ma, my instinct was to run.’ I’m a no-tolerant mother. Everybody that knows me, know I don’t play that.”

She said she’s grounded her son on many prior occasions to keep him from the trouble of the streets. She described a neighborhood where “young kids shoot each other” and “a lot of his friends have been killed.”

“There’s some days that I’ll shield him in the house just so he won’t go outside and I know that I can’t do that for the rest of my life,” she said. “Is he a perfect boy? No he’s not. But he’s mine.”

Cheryl Chumley

Cheryl K. Chumley is a journalist, columnist, public speaker and author of "The Devil in DC." and "Police State USA: How Orwell's Nightmare is Becoming our Reality." She is also a journalism fellow with The Phillips Foundation in Washington, D.C., where she spent a year researching and writing about private property rights. Read more of Cheryl Chumley's articles here.