Mom pens poignant letter for man who carjacked her at gunpoint: ‘You had choices to make too’
Trigger warning: This story contains themes of violence that some readers may find distressing.
It has often been established in courts that people accused of crimes or who have committed a crime did it out of helplessness. After encountering such experiences, it is difficult to figure out what to feel about the situation and whether or not to forgive the person, especially if you’re the victim. A mom named Sydnie Murphy was held at gunpoint in late 2022, per Love What Matters. The woman was carjacked by a young man. She managed to escape and save her life while the guilty was sentenced to prison and received a punishment for his wrongdoings. The mom decided to write a heartfelt letter to the man and it’s surreal.
Murphy began the letter by explaining how she felt. She noted that out of fear, she couldn’t say much at the time. If she could, she would have begged him not to end her life. “I would have told you that I’m a mom, a friend, a sister, and a daughter,” she said. She added that she would have also explained how important the vehicle was to her and how hard she had worked to earn it. “I didn’t get to say any of that because you took that away from me,” Murphy remarked. She decided to share about her childhood and life so that the person knew what he was really doing—that it was not just carjacking but an event that could have changed so much in so many lives.
The mom mentioned that she had been in multiple foster homes as a child, many of which were abusive. She finally learned to live and worked hard to build a career and heal. She then connected to the life of the suspect. "You had choices to make too," she said. “People like us can take our background and use it as an excuse. Or we can use it to empower us and make us more empathetic and emotionally intelligent. Somewhere along the line, you made the wrong choice,” she wrote. She added that his choice came out of a compulsion to fit into society’s standards. “We deserve better than that for ourselves,” the mom remarked.
She pointed out that though the judge would be delivering a sentence in court that would change the man’s life, he still had a choice on how to live. The mom explained that the man had the choice to pursue education and a career or go back down the same wrong path again. She hoped he’d choose the former. “I want you to know I will still pray for you. Lastly, I want you to know, I forgive you and I am so very thankful you chose not to shoot,” she concluded. Sharing why she chose to forgive someone who could have taken her life, Murphy had a powerful answer. “I have had people do terrible things to myself, my mother and my siblings. I used to spend a lot of time so angry,” she said.
She added, “Holding grudges and anger in my heart didn’t hurt them, it hurt me.” Murphy acknowledged that it isn’t easy to decide to forgive. But, holding the anger “makes less room for love.” Concluding strongly, the woman left a message for all to ponder. She said, “My life and my story are mine to write and I will be damned if I let someone else write it for me.”