Elizabeth “Granny” Mitchell-Dulaney, who is about 70 years old, said she felt like she had no other choice on Labor Day of 1999 when the Fourth Street gangsters started approaching her.
“I remember I had a gun locked in my bedroom upstairs,” she said, sitting down in the living room of her house. Although it has been about four years since that fateful Labor Day, the gun is what helped start Granny’s nightmare.
Earlier that day, Mitchell-Dulaney, also known as “Granny” by her friends for her love of children, was throwing a huge cookout. Along with friends and family, eight of Granny’s day care children were also at the party. Granny ran a day care center from her house.
Then Granny heard a cry from her great-granddaughter, Ivory.
“I had some of children that I was keeping, because I kept children seven days a week, 24 hours a day,” Granny said.
” ‘Great granny, somebody threw a big rock over the fence,’ ” Ivory told her, Granny said. The rock almost hit Bryan – one of the children Granny was sitting – in the head.
She ran out the house, past the fence’s gate and into the street to ask the neighbors if they witnessed anyone throwing a rock. The neighbor across the street didn’t see anything. Granny said she questioned a couple of children who said they had seen a boy strolling down the street. Granny said she chased after the boy, but he couldn’t give her any information either.
Realizing it was a hopeless case, Granny started walking back home. Suddenly, the streets seemed full with men.
“Here comes a whole big crowd,” Granny said. “I don’t know where they come from all of sudden … from both sides of the street. (They) looked like they was coming out of their houses.”
Granny did everything for the children she baby-sat.
“This is something that never came out, that I always wanted them to express,” Granny said. “I had signed papers for each one of those children that I was keeping that I am totally responsible.”
The crowd was also armed.
“One boy had a gun,” Granny said. “One had a big steel pipe.”
When Granny sensed the danger to the children, she needed to take action.
“I just got real upset,” Granny said. “I just kind of lost it.”
That is when Granny ran upstairs to retrieve her gun. Later, Granny said she could even remember trying to get the gun.
“It happened so fast. It was like lightning,” Granny said.
With the gun in hand, Granny stepped outside. She hoped to scare the gang of boys away.
“At that time, I shot in the ground for them to stop. I think I was scared,” she said. “They kept coming.”
“That’s when I raised up my gun and shot one in the stomach,” Granny said. “I shot again.”
The second shot grazed a pager of another gang member, she said. After the second shot, the gang scattered out and ran away. She made the 9-1-1 call, she said.
The police arrested Granny, she said. After her conviction, she served a three-year sentence.
However, Granny said she didn’t see herself as having any other choice. For the four and a half previous years, Granny called the police complaining about threats she had received from her neighbors.
“I think I must have called the police about 200 times during that four years,” she said. “I got no response.”
Within the neighborhood, the Fourth Street Gang, the same boys who had tried to attack Granny, were causing trouble by drug dealing. In fact, according to a press release from City Council, the dealers were operating. From a duplex house across the street, at 1616 and 1618 S. Fourth St. A little less than a month ago, on April 10, both houses were demolished.
The head of the operation was Granny’s next door neighbor.
“She was a ‘pill lady,’ ” Granny said. “That’s what everyone calls her.”
Also known as the “Pill House Operator,” Virginia Smith was later sentenced in June 2000 to 23 years in prison as a result of an investigation conducted by the Pharmaceutical Unit, according to the Columbus Division of Police Web site.
“Smith was the head one,” Granny said. “Her sons was helping her.”
At first, Granny left the drug dealers to themselves. However, the most annoying thing for Granny was the way the drug dealers trespassed over her yard.
“They used to walk across my yard to get to the other side to avoid the police,” Granny said. The police had been staking out the area further down the street, she said.
To deter the drug dealers from crossing her property, she said she decided to put a fence around her house. But then the situation went from bad to worse. Annoyed with the blockade Granny put around her house, the gang began spraying graffiti across the fence and destroying some of the wooden boards. After the destruction, Granny said she began calling the police.
With all the phone calls she made down to the station, the gang members thought she was becoming an informant to the police, she said.
“They were calling me a snitch,” Granny said. “And they all thought that because I was the only black person in that vicinity, and all of them surrounding me was white.”
As she recalled her prison days, tears started coming to her eyes.
“Women were going with each other. There was no respect,” she said.
It was difficult for Granny to gain the other inmate’s favor.
“I had to gain my respect,” Granny said, sniffling into her handkerchief. “The one who was bothering me … I beat her up. And then they put me in the hole,” she said, referring to solitary confinement.
The hole was one of the worst things, she said. The room was always cold. The shower had to be turned on to heat up the room with the hot water. Meals were served through the door.
It’s exactly like what is seen on TV, she said.
On June 20, 2002, Granny was granted clemency. But things were not over.
“They had me going to the parole officer – reporting,” she said. “They was taking urine samples from me as if I was a drug addict or something.”
Now, it’s been a about a year since Granny was let out of prison, and she is focusing on the future. But the future seems bleak, since Granny can’t do the one thing she loves the most – taking care of children.
“They got me labeled as a felony,” she said. “I can’t run my daycare, which kids is my life.”
Granny hasn’t given up the fight. She keeps praying to God.
“I am a Christian person. I’m a Christian when I went there,” she said, meaning the prison. “I was a Christian when I was there. And I am even a better Christian now after all I’ve been through. God is all I have.”
