Ashley Smith: An American Heroine

John Trucano

Whom do you think of when you think of hero? Someone running into a burning building to save a child? A soldier risking life and limb on a foreign battlefield in service to their country?

What about an everyday, ordinary person, who doesn’t normally do anything to grab the headlines, engaging in everyday, ordinary activities until she is thrust, quite suddenly into an extremely stressful, and potentially life threatening situation. Suppose she remains calm through this storm, and handles the situation with grace and clear thinking. She does all the right things to diffuse an already explosive situation in dealing with a man on a rampage. She would be a hero also, wouldn’t she? Such was the case with Ashley Smith.

Rape defendant turned killer Brian Nichols showed up at her north Atlanta apartment door early Saturday morning, March 11th, as she was coming home from shopping. He told her he didn’t want to hurt anyone else, and if she wouldn’t scream, he wouldn’t kill her. She could have lost her head and screamed, and he would have killed her, and she’d be another on a growing list of his victims. He’d already killed a judge, a court reporter, a deputy, and a customs officer. But Ashley remained calm, and there’s no way to know how many lives she saved by her bravery.

During the next 13 hours in her apartment, she talked to her captor abut her faith and family. She told him she had a 5 year old daughter, and shared a very painful memory of her husband being killed 4 years earlier, and if he killed her, her daughter wouldn’t have a mommy or a daddy. She read the Bible and the book “A purpose driven life” to him. She has made that book more of a best seller than it already was as spiritually hungry people seek an answer from someone who obviously has found one. She made him breakfast, and they watched the coverage of the manhunt for him on television. She encouraged him to turn himself in. Nichols called her his angel sent from God. It is clear that Ashley Smith had been prepared by God for this very day.

She gained his trust, and he let her go. She called 911 from her cell phone, and police arrested him at her apartment without incident. An event that began with such violence ended peacefully.

Yes, Ashley Smith is a hero in every sense of the word. If we are to look up to anyone, it should be someone like her who has her life and priorities in proper perspective. The only remaining question is how would I have handled the situation if it were me instead of her. How would you? The way we answer determines where we are on life’s journey. Would people say of us hero, or victim?