Mom's Last Act Is to Save Baby

Jessica Arrendale shielded daughter with her body
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 21, 2014 2:50 PM CDT
Mom's Last Act Is to Save Baby
Stock image   (Shutterstock)

After a night out on Saturday, a drunk and angry Antoine Davis chased Jessica Arrendale, the mother of his child, up the stairs of her Atlanta-area townhome, according to Arrendale's mother, Teresa Inniello. As Arrendale tried to defend herself with a baseball bat, Davis turned the bat on her, Inniello tells WSB. Then Arrendale, with 6-month-old daughter Cobie in her arms, managed to retreat to a bathroom and lock the door. But Davis got in anyway, this time with his assault rifle, Inniello says, and shot Arrendale in the head. That's when the 33-year-old somehow managed to save Cobie, even as she died. "He shot her and they (police) don’t know how she was able to twist her body and fall literally in the opposite direction," Inniello says.

Somehow, Arrendale fell over the toilet bowl instead of onto the floor, dropping Cobie into the bowl and covering her with her body. "She had pure will," Ionniello says. "She wanted that baby to live." Ionniello believes Davis would have killed Cobie had he been able to see her; instead, he walked into his daughter's room and killed himself. The baby remained in the toilet bowl for 13 hours before police finally deemed the home safe to enter; she had a head injury, which Inniello says may have come from the bat, and was also treated for hypothermia. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that she is in Child Services' custody, but Inniello says she hopes to take her home soon, where she'll join her 15-year-old sister. (This mom died so that her baby could live.)

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