Anna Branch sits on the front porch of her central city home. She can be seen here through a bullet hole in a plastic chair. Photo by Amy Voigt/The Blade
Come December 2013, Anna Branch, 57, will have lived in her West Woodruff Avenue home for 50 years, a milestone she's anxious to mark.
The block where she lives is usually quiet -- she knows all of her neighbors and likes to watch baseball games from her back yard, which faces Robinson Elementary School.
But for nearly a year, her home has become target practice for people presumably retaliating against her grandson, Martrece Dobson, who, last October, shot and killed Justin Smith. Dobson was cleared in the death by way of self-defense.
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Her home, outside and in, is riddled with bullet holes. When she tried to recall the number of times the home has been shot at since Smith, a well-known gang leader, was killed, she paused, remembering each incident.
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Do you just count the times the house was hit? What about the times Dobson came to visit and ended up being shot at while driving down the street? Can you take into consideration the number of times men drive by in a car, slow down as they pass the house, and signal with their hands like they're firing a gun?
Anna Branch. Photo by Amy Voigt/The Blade
The last time the house was shot up, police told her they found more than two dozen fresh bullet holes. One casing ended up in the middle of her living room. And despite the fact that her 1-year-old great-grandson, Aidynn, Martrece's son, was standing on the front porch and her nephew was sitting in a white plastic lawn chair, nobody was hit.
"I just thank God," she said looking toward the sky.
Two men were arrested for the shooting, which, by coincidence happened only 12 hours before two toddlers were shot, one fatally, as they slept in a central Toledo apartment. Police have said the two incidents are not related.
Dobson was friends with Smith -- with all of the men in the Lil Heads gang that is known to hang out on Fernwood Avenue and at Smith Park (recently police have said they've shifted slightly, hanging out near Central and Detroit avenues). After the shooting, gang members said Dobson was no longer welcome in their group of friends.
He killed someone they loved, they said.
What is so frustrating to Branch is that she knows these men.
"All of these guys have been in my home," she said. "They have been in my back yard. Some have even eaten at my table.
"I hate what happened," she said referring to Smith's death. "No one wants to go through that, but Martrece went to court, he was judged by his peers, and they decided he wasn't guilty."
Branch said she begged Dobson not to go to the vigil that night. Something -- call it her mother's intuition -- just made her think going was a bad idea.
"Why grandma? We're all friends," Branch recalled Dobson saying to her.
Branch said that she sleeps in more now than she used to. It's hard to fall asleep at night not knowing if you'll be woken by gunfire. The pop of a firework or even an unexpected noise outside startles her.
After the most recent shooting, Branch's dog, Mr. Diesel, ran away and hasn't come back.
Because the shooting last week was in broad daylight, she's not sure how much longer she'll be able to spend time outside, enjoying a neighborhood she still loves.
"You never know when they're watching you," she said. "They walk up and down the alley. They stalk the house. Then they ambush you."
"I wish, truthfully, they would leave me the hell alone," Branch said.
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