[RELAXING MUSIC]
Naomi is also in prison.
She's 16 now-- was 14 at the time of the shooting.
The young man that Naomi shot fortunately
was able to survive.
But you shot him, why?
It was an ongoing harassment of over a period
of about two months.
And I had finally just gotten fed up with it.
Mainly, it was because of lots of built-up emotions
and anger from my whole childhood
and different situations.
This is very interesting to me, Naomi.
Because I did a show at the beginning of this fall season
with a number of mothers who had lost
their children this summer.
And there was a woman on that show who said that America
doesn't understand that there's no such thing as cat fights
or fist fights after school anymore.
Because young people, such as yourself,
don't believe in, like, meeting after school,
and having a tussle, and pulling somebody's hair anymore.
But you all are armed-- that you have guns,
and so when somebody does something to upset you,
it's not like, we'll settle this after school,
like it was in our days when I was trying to talk
people out of fighting me.
But you go get a gun.
What was going through your mind before you
actually shot him to say, well, I'm going to end this?
-The violence in my family probably had a big part of it.
And accessibility was part of it, too.
If I didn't have access to a gun,
I probably wouldn't have done it.
OK.
So what else do you think it was?
You think it's access.
First of all, didn't your father used to take you
to a shooting range? - Yeah.
OPRAH WINFREY: Yeah.
Not a shooting range, but we used to practice shooting
a lot when I was growing up. OPRAH WINFREY: Because what?
He just wanted you to know how to shoot?
For fun.
OPRAH WINFREY: For fun?
Yeah.
He wanted you to be skilled at handling a gun?
I don't know if it was that, but generally
he would go shooting with his--
It's a part of what you all did for recreation,
though, is what I'm saying.
NAOMI: Yeah.
Sport.
So you knew how to fire a gun?
Yes.
And knew how to aim and hit the target
that you were aiming at?
Yes.
Yeah.
So I guess I'm going back to the question of,
what process brought you to thinking, when this young boy
was messing with you on the school bus
or-- what was he saying?
Making jokes about you or something?
Just little, petty things like name calling--
OPRAH WINFREY: Right.
--talking behind my back.
And if I confronted him, he would go,
oh, I'm not talking about you--
and little, catty things, back and forth.
OK.
Catty things, back and forth--
things that happen to people every day in school.
So what was it about this situation
or about you that made you think he needed to be shot?
I have an extreme anger problem.
And that's my first reaction.
When I was out, when someone made me mad,
that's my first thought-- to hurt
them in some way or another.
OPRAH WINFREY: Really?
Whether it be psychologically or physically.
And that's--
OPRAH WINFREY: So did you plan it for a long time?
About the five minutes before I got off the bus.
I'd been thinking of it a week to two weeks in advance
about how I could do this, or how I could do that, but--
OPRAH WINFREY: What other things were you thinking
about what you could do?
Beating him up or just--
actually, shooting him didn't cross my mind until that day.
And what did you do?
What do you mean?
OPRAH WINFREY: When you made the decision that you
were going to shoot him?
Oh, I was sitting with my friends,
and he kept on bugging me.
And so I went back to him, and I asked him some kind of question
like, what are you talking about?
And he was-- oh, I'm not talking about you,
and doing the same thing he usually did.
And so, I was like, OK.
I'm fed up.
It had been happening for two months,
and I finally just went over the limit.
I was sick of it.
And I said that I was going to go home, get my dad's gun,
and shoot this guy. And my friends--
OPRAH WINFREY: You told your friends this?
Yes. OPRAH WINFREY: Yeah.
And my friends, they had been suffering,
too, just for the simple fact that they were my friends.
They had not done anything to him.
And he was harassing them also, just
because they hung around me.
And they were like, OK, I want to come.
I want to come.
No, you can't come.
This isn't, like, some party or anything.
And they were like, I want to come.
So when we got off the bus, they followed me home.
And I got my dad's gun.
And we went up and shot him.
OPRAH WINFREY: Where did you go to shoot him?
He lived about two houses up from me.
OPRAH WINFREY: So you went.
You rang the doorbell.
NAOMI: Yeah.
He opened the door.
Yeah.
And you just shot him.
Yep.
OPRAH WINFREY: Did you intend to kill him?
At the time, there was a lot of different plans.
The people that went with me were saying,
oh, you should shoot him here.
Or, no, you should shoot him there.
I had my plans that I was going to shoot
him three times in the head.
And it changed about a million different times in between
from when I left my house until I got up to his porch.
And finally, what went through is
that I shot him in the chest.
OPRAH WINFREY: And why?
Why did you decide that?
You wanted him to live?
You--
My thoughts were really muddled.
It's really hard to remember something like that
because it's not exactly something to be proud of.
It's a very, incredibly stupid mistake.
OPRAH WINFREY: To say the least.
That's the way it happened.
I think I just had the gun aimed at about chest level.
So when he opened the door, instead of raising it higher,
I shot him to get it over with.
And then--
But the question I was asking--
did you intend to kill him?
Were you surprised he lived?
How many times did you shoot him?
I shot him one time in the chest.
And I was surprised that he was living.
Because I was in the police station when they told them
he was in Harborview, but he is living.
And at the time, I was like, oh, great.
Because--
Didn't you tell your friends that was the happiest day
of your life, though?
Didn't you say that was the happiest day of your life?
I don't remember saying that to my friends.
OPRAH WINFREY: OK.
I read that that's what your friends
had reported that you'd said.
After you shot him, you left and said
that it was the happiest day.
I was smiling.
And I know that in my court hearing,
they had said that I was smiling like it was
the happiest day of my life.
But I don't remember saying that.
I could have, but I don't remember.
OPRAH WINFREY: OK.
What are you charged with, Naomi?
Premeditated attempted murder in the first degree.
And how long are you there for?
My sentence was about 3 and 1/2 years without time served.
And I did about six months in Juvenile.
OPRAH WINFREY: OK.
So when are you out?
June 3rd, 1994.
OPRAH WINFREY: June 3rd, 1994.