Homicide victims’ families gather to remember loved ones

The annual gathering drew homicide detectives, a mayor-elect, a new police chief and familiar stories of loss.

Gwen Mayo and Theresa Williams sat side by side, and when Williams fell to her knees in grief last night, Mayo was there to help her up.

They share a terrible bond.

And in the foyer of Richmond City Hall last night, they shared it with more than 100 others.

The loved ones of Richmond-area homicide victims have forged a solemn but profound kinship focused on the region's grimmest statistic.

The effort has been under way since 1991, begun by Linda Jordan, whose son, William, was killed in April 1990.

"Time does not heal all wounds," Jordan said after the hourlong meeting, highlighted by the placement of 57 red ribbons on a statue called "River of Tears."

In a city once known for its high murder rate and now hopeful about its decline in homicides, Jordan's Coalition Against Violence never stops growing.

Its annual holiday season gathering at City Hall last night drew homicide detectives, a mayor-elect, a new police chief and familiar stories of loss.

In the six years he has attended, Maj. John Venuti said, Richmond has recorded about 400 killings. He promised efforts to continue a downward trend.

But Greg Wilkerson, a judicial assistant in the Richmond courts system, spoke, too, of undiminished grief.

He lost a brother to a shooting more than a decade ago.

"We are called survivor victims, but we are not victims of weakness who fall down and never get back up. We do get back up."

So Williams, mother of a slain daughter, got back up after pinning her red ribbon to the statue.

And she made it back to her seat with the help of Mayo, sister of two brothers killed at Hillside Court.

Family members of Jesse Vaughan Sr., killed in August 1973, were there. Loved ones of Tahliek Taliaferro, shot to death in Powhatan County this past summer, were there. And loved ones of Anthony Owens, who was killed in February, looked for a fresh start.

"It helps with the healing," said Owens' mother, Dorothy Rasheed. "We can talk to people who have been in our shoes."

For some, the grieving process is just starting. When the service began last night at City Hall, so did visitation hours at a Laburnum Avenue funeral home.

The family of Quintin LaMar Chambers, gunned down in a drive-by shooting last week off Pleasant Street in eastern Henrico County, was receiving friends.

A day past his 16th birthday, he lay in a coffin, dressed in a gray suit beneath cotton netting.

His family called him Skittles.
Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .