“I have never been more scared in my life.”
Niecy Nash revisited this fear, which she experienced at just 15 years old, during a recent episode of UNCENSORED on TV One. The Emmy-nominated actress and comedian walked viewers through a devastating moment where she witnessed her mother, Margaret Ensley, get shot by her then-boyfriend.
“I heard him say, ‘I did something I didn’t want to do. I shot Margaret,’” Nash remembers hearing from her mother’s shooter. “He said, ‘God forgive me,’ boom!”’
Ms. Ensley appears in the documentary and says she heard the gun go off after she had been shot. “I thought that perhaps he had shot her,” she remembers. “What happened was, he had taken a 32 [pistol] and shot himself in the stomach.”
Nash says, “I heard him fall on the hardwood, and then I heard him drag [himself] right in front of the room that I was hiding in. He stopped. I could hear my mother wailing in the backyard, ‘Help me! Jesus, help me!’ to the top of her throat.”
“I was under that bed, and I was shaking, I have never been that scared in my life, and it started to get dark.”
While suffering from his self-inflicted gunshot wound, the shooter then lit the house on fire with Niecy still inside. “I could hear my mother screaming, and all of a sudden, something went through me and it just said ‘run!’
Thankfully, Niecy and her mother survived the horrific incident. But she’s not letting her pain go in vain. The actress has partnered with several organizations, including STAND For Families Free Of Violence. “I didn’t walk through the emotional cost [of seeing her mother abused and then shot and dealing with her brother’s passing] until I was a grown woman,” she told the organization in 2014. “I didn’t look at that and peel the layers of the onion back until I was almost 30….I don’t think anything you go through is just for you. It’s a little selfish to keep a testimony to yourself.”
UNCENSORED with Niecy Nash premieres on TV One Sunday, November 3 at 9 p.m. ET/8C.