Lakisha Gaither, 35, fired a single round into the air from her lawfully owned firearm over the weekend in an effort to scare away a group of boys who were attacking her 15-year-old daughter, Brianna Stewart. Brianna has since gone missing and Gaither is frantically searching for her daughter as she prepares for her arraignment on October 30. That’s right, she was charged for shooting into the air in a state that loves guns!

Around 10 boys had followed Gaither and her daughter into the parking lot of their apartment complex in Woodbridge, Virginia, last Saturday night following a dispute between Brianna and another teen girl. The boys shouted insults at the the women, so Brianna stood up to them. That’s when, according to Gaither, one of the boys grabbed Brianna’s shirt and punched her in the face, striking her repeatedly. Fearing that she would be outnumbered if she put herself in the middle of the encounter, Gaither, who has an open carry license, reached for her gun.

“I stopped and turned to walk to the middle of the parking lot. I made sure no one was around me,” Gaither told the Washington Times. “I unholstered my gun, pointed it straight in the air and fired just one shot to get him off my child.”

“I didn’t feel like I was wrong,” she added. “I wanted to protect my child.”

When Prince William County police arrived, they arrested Gaither and charged her with reckless use of a weapon, a misdemeanor, despite no resulting injuries or property damage.

The Washington Times reports:

Prince William County police spokesman Officer Jonathan L. Perok said Ms. Gaither “should have called police instead of taking matters into her own hands.”

“You can’t fire into the air,” Officer Perok said. “Once something goes up, it comes down. There’s the possibility of causing property damage, injuring someone or killing someone. In an apartment complex, the odds of that bullet coming down and striking something are very high.”

That is a major contradiction given that in Virginia, there have been cases where armed civilians have fired, not in the air, but at actual human beings and faced no charges.

In March, not far from where Gaither lives, 16-year-old Caleb Gordley was shot and killed by a neighbor two doors down from him. Caleb was grounded that night and had snuck out of his house to attend a party, where he and his friends were drinking. He walked back home a couple hours later but mistook his neighbor’s house for his own (the houses are nearly identical) and he climbed into what he believed was his back window. Thinking Caleb was an intruder, the homeowner grabbed his gun, fired a warning shot and yelled for Caleb to stop. But Caleb brushed right past him. The homeowner then fired several more times at the teen, killing him. Loudoun County police chalked it up to a “tragic set of circumstances” and no charges were ever filed.

Did the homeowner act appropriately? I suppose it’s a gray area worthy of debate. I am personally against conceal carry laws and believe armed citizens make all of us less safe, but that’s a discussion for another time. My more immediate point is that there seems to be a pattern of denying women, particularly black women, the same right to self-defense as men, particularly white men.

For example, Marissa Alexander, a black Florida mother, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot into the air during a violent argument with her abusive and estranged husband. Though she was recently granted a new trial (only after a public campaign demanded it) the courts continue to deny her request to invoke a Stand Your Ground defense. In stark contrast, the same prosecutor who successfully put Alexander behind bars failed to put up the same fight against George Zimmerman, who was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin. Keep in mind that Alexander fired into the air while Zimmerman fired into an unarmed black teen.

Another example is Shannon Anthony Scott, a South Carolina man who was granted Stand Your Ground immunity earlier this month after shooting at a car full of teen girls who he says were harassing his teenage daughter. He missed and hit a black teen bystander by mistake, killing him. Scott not only failed to tell police that he had fired his gun that night, he waited four days before turning himself in. Yet he is home free.

Of course the racial disparities in the application of Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws go beyond gender. Look no further than the case of John McNeil for proof. And the statistics agree: white-on-black homicide 11 times more likely to be found justified than black-on-white. Still, cases like Marissa Alexander’s and now Lakisha Gaither’s illustrate that for black female bodies, self-defense is NEVER an option.

Meanwhile, Gaither is worried sick about her daughter. NBC 4 Washington reports:

Several hours after the incident and fearing for her daughter’s life, Gaither asked her mother to take Stewart for the night.

Sunday around 8:30 a.m., Gaither said her mother called her and told her Stewart was nowhere to be found. No one has seen or heard from Stewart since that morning.

“I don’t know where she [is],” Gaither said, fighting back tears. “I don’t know if she’s OK; I don’t know if she’s safe; I don’t know if she’s hurt. There’s been no activity on her Facebook.”

Stewart is 5’9″, weighs 160 pounds and has dimples on her cheeks.

Last month, an 18-year-old Woodbridge student was found stabbed to death in a park slightly more than two miles from where the confrontation involving Stewart and her mother happened. Several arrests have been made in the death of Kenny Diaz, a varsity football player at Woodbridge High School.

Let’s all hope Brianna makes it home safe and unharmed.

15-year-old Brianna Stewart

15-year-old Brianna Stewart (NBC Washington)