Mother grieves over slain boy
It was a little before 10 Tuesday night, and Shawnta Little had just given her son his five-minute warning.
A few minutes later, she heard a beating on the door that would lead to nearly 48 hours in Johns Hopkins Children's Center, where after continuous prayer and medical tests, Little would make the final decision of her 12-year-old son's life: letting his body succumb to the gun shots that had left him brain dead.
"We just kept praying, and they did every test they could do to be absolutely sure," Little said, a day after she authorized doctor's to take her son off life support. "And the fact that they donated his organs, I still feel like I'm going to go up there and they're going to say, 'Oh, he woke up.'"
Sean Johnson was pronounced dead at 5:05 p.m. Thursday, two days after he and three of his friends were shot night while watching a basketball game on the front porch of a home in Northeast Baltimore. Police, who have made no arrests, said a man with a gun turned a corner and opened fire on people who were sitting on a porch in the 1700 block of Cliftview Ave., near Harford Road.
This account is from reporters Erica L. Green and Yeganeh June Torbati, in an exclusive interview with Sean's mother [Read full story here]. Here is a scene from the boy's school as the principal tells the boy's classmates he has died:
By mid-morning, the screams of Sean's seventh-grade classmates at Montebello Elementary/Middle School had subsided and streams of tears had dried. And as Principal Camille Bell assembled school pictures for Sean's obituary and memorial posters, the anger set in.
Bell said that while she appreciates the community outrage, she would like to see follow through.
Assault "People tend to want to make a lot of noise when something happens, hold vigils, have marches, have meetings, and then that's it," she said.
"As a community leader, I should be going to these kinds of meetings every other week. The schools can't do it by themselves, the police can't do it by themselves. We need to collectively send the message that this is not OK."
Bell used Sean's death to jolt her eighth graders, whose recent behavior had troubled her. In a rousing speech about "choices," Bell said she brought her teenagers to tears, describing how unrecognizable he was when she visited him in the hospital.
"It was somebody choice to fight that took our friend," Bell said. "They needed to know that in two weeks, I let them go, and they will be judged by the choices they make. I don't want to read about them in the paper."
