Maisha Allums can't recall the precise moment she felt she lost control. It felt more like a series of moments. Each seemed strange to her at the time, but she had nothing to compare them to. Is this normal? she and her husband found themselves asking, until one day the question became a certainty: This can't be normal.
On July 1, 2014, Allums' mother Marlene Pinnock was pummeled on the side of Los Angeles's Interstate 10 by Daniel Andrew, an officer with the California Highway Patrol. A passerby posted a video of the beating to YouTube on July 2. News outlets picked up the story on July 4. Allums and her family lawyer, Caree Harper, began addressing press conferences on July 6.
David Diaz / CBS / Via youtube.com
This cycle of brutality and outrage has become dreadfully familiar to Americans in the past year and a half, but wasn't so much then. Michael Brown, whose death at the hands of a Missouri police officer ignited weeks of protests and propelled Black Lives Matter activism into the mainstream, was still alive during Pinnock's attack in L.A., after which she was hospitalized and Officer Andrew was put on administrative leave. Three months later, Pinnock settled with the county for $1.5 million, while the California Highway Patrol sent an investigation to the District Attorney's Office "outlining potentially serious charges" for Andrew, who had resigned. All signs pointed to justice. Until they didn't.
There were small things at first, Allums said: Before the settlement was reached, Harper, the lawyer, began referring to Pinnock as her cousin; Allums had to make appointments to see her mother; disagreements between Harper and Pinnock's family turned into shouting matches. Is this normal? Then came the very big thing: A federal judge threw Harper in jail for two days for not answering his questions about how she came to represent Pinnock and made her money off the case. This can't be normal.
Last week, the District Attorney's office announced Daniel Andrew would not be charged with a crime, saying it was "legal and necessary" for him to use force — to tackle, straddle, restrain, and repeatedly punch — "to protect not only his own life but also that of Ms. Pinnock." But as outrage over Pinnock's beating renews, only one thing is known about Pinnock herself: The 51-year-old transient woman with bipolar disorder is back to "square one," as her daughter says. Despite her new trust fund, she's spent recent months on the streets, off her medication, and in and out of hospitals. The only people whose lives have markedly changed are those caught up in the private-turned-public dispute over Pinnock's best interests — a tug-of-war fueled by money, ego, and complicated family ties, centered on a woman who calls nowhere home.
On one side: Allums and her husband — Pinnock's family. On the other: Pinnock's lawyer and friend — a woman who thinks she's family. Pinnock floats in and out of reach from both of them.
Maisha Allums and her husband, Robert Nobles, pose for a portrait at their home on Sunday, Nov. 8, in Los Angeles.
Patrick T. Fallon for BuzzFeed News
Allums, 38, was watching the news when she saw the clip for the first time. She had to do a double take, she said. "Is that my mom?"
She called the sheriff's department and local hospitals, looking for any information about the woman beaten on the 10. Robert Nobles, Allums' husband, described the day as exhausting. But just before midnight, Allums got a call from her great aunt — a woman she said she hadn't seen in at least 20 years. Her aunt also had Caree Harper, a Los Angeles–based attorney, on the line. Harper was known then for representing the family of a black Pasadena teenager who died in 2012 after being shot by police officers seven times.
The lawyer told Allums that at her aunt's request, she had learned where Pinnock was being held and could help the family. Harper came to Allums' South L.A. apartment that night. There, according to Allums and Nobles, she offered to take them to see Pinnock the next morning if — only if — Allums signed a retainer agreement hiring Harper as the family lawyer.
Marlene Pinnock (left) poses with her attorney, Caree Harper, during an interview Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014, in Los Angeles.
John Hopper / AP
In an interview with BuzzFeed News late this summer, Allums explained why she signed it. "All I'm thinking," she said, hands folded evenly on her dining table, "is I want to see my mom and I'll deal with the rest later."
The next morning, Allums and Nobles visited Pinnock at Augustus Hawkins Mental Health Center, where Pinnock was on a 14-day hold for mental evaluation. When Pinnock talked about the beating during that time, she would only say was it wasn't her fault, her daughter and son-in-law recalled. "She said she thought it was the devil — she was trying to run away from the devil," Nobles said. Pinnock never explained how she ended up on the freeway, Nobles added, but they believed she was living at a “little encampment over there," near Interstate 10's La Brea exit.
When speaking about her mother, Allums deliberately uses the phrase "homeless by choice." "My mom was never 'homeless,'" she said. "She didn't want to stay here, or stay with her dad, or stay with her brother or sister or anything like that. … When she's off her meds, that's just kind of her deal."
Pinnock has been transient since at least 2001. She has bipolar disorder, which she self-medicates with alcohol, Allums said. While Allums and Nobles refer to Pinnock's alcoholism explicitly — saying it makes her "10 times worse" — Caree Harper speaks more generally about Pinnock's condition: "There are certain triggers," the lawyer said. "If not properly medicated, you can fall by the wayside. Sometimes [people with bipolar disorder] can have a secondary thing, like alcoholism or drug abuse." Harper has denied that Pinnock was drinking or on drugs at the time of her freeway beating.
Pinnock's two-week hospitalization following the attack was the first time she had consistently taken her medication in 15 years, Allums said. It was also during those two weeks that Harper and Pinnock became close; Harper began openly calling her client "Cousin P." "Early on we felt like we were kindreds," Harper explained. "We were kind of related."
As Harper and Pinnock grew closer, the lawyer's relationship with Pinnock’s daughter and son-in-law began to fissure. When Allums and Nobles needed to be at meetings or interviews or press conferences, Harper would pick them up in expensive cars — or send town cars and limos when she couldn't pick them up — they said. When reporters barraged with Allums with requests, Harper allegedly offered to put the couple up in a five-star hotel. They said no.
"We could tell that she was trying to overspend money, so we cut all that down. We cut all that crap," Nobles said. "We were kind of uncooperative with the way she wanted things."
At the hospital one day, Harper and Allums met with Pinnock's doctors to discuss Pinnock's progress and pending discharge. Allums told the hospital she didn't think her mother was ready to leave the facility.
"She was getting better as she was in there, but she still was sick. She had been off her meds for a long time," Allums said. "No one wanted to put her in there forever, but she needed to take that medicine, and she wouldn't have taken it if she was out."
When Harper disagreed with Allums in front of the doctors — arguing Pinnock was ready to be released — Allums left the meeting, she said. A few days later, there was another meeting; Harper allegedly told Allums she wasn't allowed to attend, at her mother's request. Pinnock had come to believe her daughter and son-in-law "wanted to lock her up for life," Allums said.
"And then," Nobles said, "She snuck her out." At that second meeting, the couple believes, doctors set a date for Pinnock's release, but Harper and Pinnock didn't tell Allums or Nobles that.
The following is largely Allums and Nobles' version of events — Harper has responded to some of the family's allegations, but not all of them.
Just before Harper "snuck" Pinnock out of the hospital, the couple had decided to fire her, they said. But for the three days following Pinnock's discharge, they didn't know where Pinnock was — again. Their lawyer wouldn't answer her phone, Allums said. When Pinnock finally called Allums and said she needed some time to herself, Allums was suspicious.
"My mom doesn't talk like that," Allums said. "She never tells me, 'Oh, I just need some time for myself to get it together.' So I knew that was Caree Harper talking."
Harper, who spoke to me in August on the patio of a restaurant on Venice Beach, arriving via bike, tells the story of Pinnock's discharge differently. On the day Pinnock was supposed to go home, Harper said, Allums and Nobles "would not accept her." So Harper put Pinnock up in a condo she paid for in Marina del Rey, the affluent yacht harbor neighborhood adjacent to Venice Beach. And on July 17, Harper filed a lawsuit on behalf of Pinnock against the officer, then a John Doe, along with the California Highway Patrol commissioner.
Sometime in August, Harper later said, Pinnock signed her own retainer agreement with Harper. And before Harper even met Allums and Nobles, Pinnock's aunt Brenda Hall-Woods — also called Alice, the woman who initially sought out Harper's help — had apparently signed one, too. What this meant to Allums and Nobles was that they didn't have the power to fire Harper anymore. Before, they only felt like they were losing control of their mother's case; now they knew they were. The couple was allowed to visit Pinnock's condo eventually, but they said they were never permitted to be alone with her.
"I had to call to make an appointment with her to see my mom," Allums said. "I didn't even know lawyers could do stuff like that."
At the condo, a bodyguard protecting Pinnock was allegedly always present when Allums and Nobles and their son — Pinnock's grandson — visited. One day the family was hanging out at the condo, the couple said, when Nobles found what he believed to be a microphone plugged in behind the television. Nobles said he unplugged the device, which allegedly drew Harper to the condo, and the two had a showdown. Neither went into detail about what exactly was said — or shouted — but Nobles remarked that it got "really bad, to where it's like, this is real unprofessional."
Pinnock, meanwhile, had been "brainwashed," according to Allums. "At this point [Harper] had my mama all sucked into her lil' loop; 'Caree loves me. She's my friend.' I'm like, 'No, there's a difference between a friend and a lawyer. She's your lawyer.' But she had my mama thinking, Oh, I love you."
Maisha Allums (left) stands with attorney Caree Harper before a news conference outside court in Los Angeles on Thursday, July 17, 2014.
Nick Ut / AP
The family spokesperson role shifted from Allums to Pinnock's aunt, while Pinnock gave interviews to CBS News and the Associated Press with Harper by her side. Allums, who once locked arms with Harper in front of news cameras, was nowhere to be seen. By the end of September — less than three months after Pinnock's beating — a settlement was announced: Pinnock would be paid $1.5 million. Allums heard about it from someone who heard it on the news.
"We didn't get to look over anything," Allums said. "We didn't know anything." She and Nobles felt "totally pushed out," and they stayed that way for months.
Harper maintains that Pinnock was her client and that her loyalty was with her client — "not with my client's daughter, not with my client's son-in-law," she said. "If my name is under this plaintiff, my loyalty is right fucking there. There's no doubt."
But by Harper’s own account, Pinnock was also more than a plaintiff to her, she said. Pinnock was "like a relative."
The lawyer and client would play badminton on the beach together, Harper said. "She loves tennis and she loves to swim. … A lot of her relatives didn't really want to take time with her, and we'd hang out, and she had some of my staff helping her get back into society. She didn't know how to use a cell phone. A lot of modern technologies went by the wayside when she was in another place."
In January 2015, Harper filmed a clip of Pinnock getting ready to drive a car for the first time in a decade. In the clip, Pinnock is beaming, laughing, a Coach-embossed wallet in her hand, buckling her seatbelt behind the steering wheel of a Mercedes Benz. (It's not clear who owned the Benz.)
"It got so weird," Nobles said. "And it was like there's nothing we can do. … We didn't know about anything until the lady went to jail."
Patrick T. Fallon for BuzzFeed News
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