At 2 a.m. on a cold March night in suburban Atlanta, Ashley Smith reaches for her front-door keys following a run to the local QuikTrip for cigarettes.
In the seconds it takes to unlock her front door, a tall man in a red down jacket and baseball cap swoops out of the shadows, grabs her arm, and sticks a gun in her face. As he shoves her into the apartment, Ashley begins screaming and pleading for her life. “I have a five-year-old daughter who has no daddy,” she cries. “If you kill me, she won’t have a mommy either.” The intruder shows no mercy. If the police arrive, he says, he will kill her, kill them, and probably himself.
The intruder, Brian Nichols, has already murdered four people on this dreadful day in 2005, including a judge, a sheriff’s
deputy, and a court stenographer. The rampage began when he was brought into court to be sentenced for rape. He overpowered the deputy, grabbed her gun, and began shooting. His escape has triggered a statewide manhunt.
Nichols ties up Ashley with masking tape and an extension cord. He asks if she has any marijuana. No, she replies but, to appease him, says she has some crystal meth. He unties her, and demands that she show him how to use the stuff. With the practiced hands of a drug-using “loser,” she cuts it and tells him how to snort it. But Nichols doesn’t want to do the drugs alone. He presses her to snort the meth with him.
Ashley realizes that if she refuses, Nichols may kill her. But she has been struggling to kick her drug habit, and knows she must now “close the door for good.” In a moment of clarity that she believes came from her newly recommitted relationship with Jesus, she knows that she would rather die than do drugs with Brian Nichols. If the police are going to find her dead, they will not find drugs in her system.
She says no.
Then, talking quietly, she begins to tell Nichols about her life.
“Are you a born-again Christian?” he asks. She says yes, and asks if he is. He says yes. “I think there’s a demon inside me,” he says, “but I’m a child of God. I’ve got this demon inside me,” he says again. “I need to get it out of me. I feel like God and Satan are fighting—fighting to take me.”
He says he chose her apartment complex randomly, that “I was just driving around.” When she tells him that maybe God sent him here, that there must be a reason he is still alive, she senses him react. She silently speaks to God: If there’s a purpose for him being here, then that means you’re really with me, right?
Nichols listens, and then says, “Maybe you’re my angel sent by God. Maybe that’s what this is. Maybe he led me right to you.”
Ashley asks if she can read. He says yes. From a wicker basket on top of her dresser, she pulls out a copy of The
Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. She had recently begun reading the book as part of trying to rebuild her life after years of destructive behavior. She reads aloud from Day 32: “God deserves your best. He shaped you for a purpose, and he expects you to make the most of what you have been given.”
Nichols wants to know what Ashley thinks her purpose is. She says it’s to serve God by helping others. “What do you think mine is?” he says. “Maybe it’s to minister to people in prison,” she says. As the minutes become hours, Ashley urges Nichols to turn himself in.
After seven hours, Nichols says Ashley can leave to meet up with her daughter. She drives away, and immediately calls 911. Police surround the building. And Nichols surrenders without a fight.
Ashley has never done drugs again.
Photo: Quantrell Colbert
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