My mother was shot by the police – and that bullet changed everything

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Lee Lawrence was 11 when his mother, Cherry Groce, was paralysed during a botched police raid. It was the end of his childhood and the start of his fight for her life and legacyWhen Lee Lawrence’s son, Brandon, picked him up from hospital after a minor operation recently, Brandon thought he saw a car following them. Lawrence looked round and told his son he didn’t think it was anything to worry about. But then the car – which turned out to be an undercover police vehicle – put its siren on. It overtook them and did a hard stop. “I expected to see guns come out next,” says Lawrence. “I thought: ‘What the hell is going on?’ I got upset. My son was trying to calm me down, because I was thinking: ‘How could this be happening to my son?’”Lawrence was 11 when his mother, Cherry Groce, was shot and paralysed in 1985 by an armed police officer during a botched raid on her home. Community fury over Groce’s shooting would spark a two-day uprising in Brixton, south London. Continue reading...