Mariah Carey’s Mom Recalls ’90s Shooting in Interview Resurfaced After Her Death

An interview with Mariah Carey and her mother, Patricia Carey, has resurfaced following Patricia’s death, which Mariah announced on Monday alongside the news of her sister Alison’s passing the same day.

Mariah didn’t disclose the causes of their deaths. “My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend,” she said in a statement to People. “Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day. I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed. I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”

This news has driven renewed interest in Mariah Carey, one of the most successful pop stars of recent times with more than a dozen No. 1 songs and a net worth reported to be in the hundreds of millions. Her professional success stands in stark contrast to her challenging upbringing in Long Island, New York.

In a 1999 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Patricia Carey recounted their struggles with poverty and racial abuse due to marrying a Black man. She recalled moving to a supposedly “affluent” part of Long Island, hoping for acceptance. However, the abuse only got worse. Patricia said someone shot at their home in 1970 when Mariah was still a baby. She revealed that one of their dogs was poisoned and recounted the frightening moment when a bullet was fired through their dining room window. Fortunately, none of the children were in the room at that time.

Mariah Carey herself has spoken about the struggle of people not accepting her diverse heritage. She said, “I feel like I’ve come a long way in terms of having people able to accept me, but there are still people to this day, in Europe or wherever I am, they’ll say ‘Now, you work with all these Black artists and you do this and that.’ I’ve been saying this for nine years now, explaining, but no matter how many times you explain something, people don’t understand.”

Patricia divorced Mariah’s father, Alfred Roy Carey, in 1972 when Mariah was just three years old. Mariah has described her relationship with her mother as “complicated.” In her 2020 memoir “The Meaning of Mariah Carey,” she elaborated on this dynamic, writing, “Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration, and disappointment. A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s.”

Mariah added that for her sanity and peace of mind, her therapist encouraged her to reframe her family relationships. “My mother became Pat to me, Morgan my ex-brother, and Alison my ex-sister … I had to stop expecting them to one day miraculously become the mommy, big brother, and big sister I fantasized about.”

In 2001, Patricia was the one who called 911 to seek medical assistance for Mariah, who was then placed under psychiatric care for a limited period, according to Yahoo.