Their children didn’t die in Parkland, but they should be remembered too, moms say
It was an early weekend afternoon and Antonio Johnson was fidgeting with his engine under the hood of his car behind his home when the gunman approached. Unaware, Johnson’s girlfriend — who was two months pregnant with their child at the time — sauntered over. Startled, the gunman shot and killed Johnson. Johnson’s girlfriend, shot four times, survived.
So did their child. Now 9 years old, her name is Miracle.
“He told me that Saturday morning, he told me if anything happened to him to raise his kids just like I raised him,” said Antonio’s mom, Myrna Williams-Cammon. “My granddaughter, she knows why she’s named Miracle.”
Though Miracle is being raised by her mother, Williams-Cammon sees her frequently, she said, and remains an integral part of her life.
On Wednesday, Williams-Cammon and about a half-dozen other mothers whose children have been killed by gunfire gathered at a street corner in Miami Gardens to remember their lost loved ones. They gathered to pray and keep the names of their children — some who were killed more than a decade ago — alive.
“I don’t care how much time goes by, you never know who will pick up the phone and say something,” said Tangela Sears, an anti-gun-violence activist who lost a son in a shooting and who formed the group of grieving mothers who usually meet once a month.
As the second anniversary of the worst and most deadly high school shooting in Florida history approached — a massacre that demanded international attention and continues to get most of the media spotlight — mothers from Miami-Dade and Broward who had lost children in less-noticed shootings met at the corner of Northwest 179th Street and 24th Avenue. It was just before sunset.
They formed a large circle around a stop sign, its pole lined with paper flowers. They held hands with each other and with advocates and with detectives still baffled by the crimes that have gone unsolved. And they prayed.
“Lord God, we ask that you grant us closure,” said Ora Austin, whose son Thaddeus Biglow, 29, was gunned down on that very street corner just hours after the Valentine’s Day 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland that claimed 17 lives and injured 17 others.
Biglow, who led a gospel choir at nearby Florida Memorial College, was killed just after midnight on Feb. 15. Biglow and a friend were walking home from a corner gas station, Austin said, when someone approached and tried to rob the men. Desperately trying to get away, they separated and ran. Biglow was shot once in the back. He was just three doors away from his home.
Last year on this very street corner, Austin said she felt “hurt and saddened” that her son’s murder got very little media attention in the wake of the Parkland shooting. This year, those feelings seem to have subsided. The crime against her son remains unsolved, as do most of the other shootings remembered by those who attended Thursday.
“I don’t want to say I feel left behind. I just want justice served,” she said. “I think of him every day. I have a picture of him at work. I don’t ever want his memory to die. If I have to stand alone, I’ll do that.”
At least once a year, they stand together.
Jesse Henry was 20 last March when he was shot and killed near the corner of Northwest 103rd Street and 19th Avenue. Kijuan Byrd Sr. was 29 when a rogue security guard shot and killed him and left Byrd’s friend paralyzed as they were about to enter a nightclub in 2012. During trial family and friends claimed the two men did nothing to provoke the shooter.
Tanya Fincher lost her son Desmond “Big Dog’ Fincher in 2005, just before New Year’s Day. He was shot and killed outside a Liberty City food store. Tanya Fincher believes a witness was too scared to come forward after being intimidated by the shooter. “Big Dog” was only 17.
Bryan Hererra was only 16 when he was shot and killed almost a decade ago. The 10th-grader at Miami Jackson Senior High School was riding his bike to visit a friend and play video games in Allapattah on a Saturday morning when someone shot him. His family, despondent in the neighborhood where Bryan was killed, moved to Davie.
Bryan’s stepmother Anabel Hererra said though the shooting has never been solved, she’ll continue to do what she can to keep the case alive.
“That’s why it’s important to keep his face out there,” she said. “He was 16 years old riding a bike in Allapattah and someone killed him.”
This story was originally published February 13, 2020 at 6:52 PM.
