Good Guy with a Gun #242: Martinsburg, WV

She stood her ground against eighteen shots. Her landlord did not stand with her. | Original incident: June 30, 2024

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.

Don’t mess with [god]mom!

Katrina Addie had a legal .380 in the Berkeley Gardens Apartments. She was a correctional officer and knew how to use it, but she didn’t expect to that day.

Her godson, Tion, was visiting from Georgia before heading to college for the fall. He went to take out the garbage at around 7 PM. Some other kids were along with him.

Elijah Williamson, 24, and a 15-year-old boy “confronted him about a situation involving two women who might get into an altercation” (quoting WV Metro News). Tion didn’t know what they were talking about, and when he said so, one of them took a swing at him and the other stepped up to fight.

Tion knows that you can’t back down from a bully — but he wasn’t stupid, either. He said:

I squared up with them both and once they realized I wasn’t going to back down, they backed up and started clutching on their hip. Knowing me, I’ll fight you but I ain’t fighting no bullet. I took off, trying to warn everybody, the kids and stuff. I didn’t know what to think. For real, that was like the first time someone was coming for me.

When Tion started yelling, Katrina looked out the window. She knew Williamson and had complained about him to building management — and she also knew that trouble was coming for her godson and the other kids. She grabbed her .380 and ran toward the door.

Here’s how she tells it:

By the time I made it to the bottom of the stairs, I could see all the kids running. By the time I stepped off the third step, I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He immediately lifted the gun and started shooting. I told all the kids to get down and we hit the deck.

A neighbor was in her car, pinned down by the gunfire, so when Addie heard a magazine drop, she got up and returned fire.

“When I got up to return fire, the young man never budged. He stood there like he had the intent to really hurt someone,” she said.

She wasn’t shooting to kill, she said — just to protect — but it seems to me that may have prolonged the incident.

“As he seen me get to my neighbor’s car to try to get her out, he immediately repeated shooting again.”

She was able to take shelter in the building until Williamson left. The neighbor’s car had been hit, but the neighbor herself was uninjured. Two apartment windows were also struck.

There were eighteen 9mm shots from Williamson in all.

Police later nabbed Williamson and charged him with eighteen counts of attempted malicious wounding.

Sounds good, right? But the story doesn’t end there, and the continuation is lousy.

Aftermath

Within just a few days, Addie’s apartment complex sent her an eviction notice.

She asked the people at her rental office about it: “They told me, ‘You didn’t break no laws.’” According to WV Metro News, Berkeley County Sheriff’s Department Chief Administrative Officer Eric Burnett told the Panhandle News Network that Addie’s actions likely prevented injury, loss of life, or further damage.

The notice does indicate that she was behind on her utilities payment — but it also says that there was a problem with “Family member fighting, brandishing and shooting a weapon; endangering self and the lives of others in the community.”

Recall, too, that she had warned management about Williamson and others in his group making videos and displaying weapons. She said:

I have been complaining for seven months. I went to the Sheriff’s Department. The Sheriff’s Department came to the complex to ask them to leave. All the landlords would say is, ‘We don’t know their names,’ but nothing extra was done to stay behind and try to locate these individuals.

She had seven children. She had thirty days.

The community was rallying around her. Some even told management that they should let her live there rent-free because she protected the residents. Unfortunately, I can’t find evidence of what happened next.

Sources

There are a few sources for the main part of this story — DC News Now, for instance — but the best source by far is Marsha Chwalik’s work at WV Metro News. All of the work I normally do to flesh out a story as well as possible was done by them, including personal interviews and detailed commentary. I actually felt guilty not just pointing you at them in the first place. All of the quotes in this story come directly from their two articles. So if you have a few minutes, go give them a few clicks and see what else they had to say.

• Godmother with gun may have saved the day in Martinsburg shooting

• Godmother who shot at gunman now faces eviction