The mother never wanted to talk in public about what happened to her son.
For 24 years — since her then-17-year-old son Ronald was pulled off a bus in Washington, D.C., charged and eventually convicted of murder — Donna Heyward always avoided recounting the pain of losing her oldest child to the criminal justice system.
“All these years I just kept it to myself,” said Heyward, the wife of Nicholas Heyward Sr., whose son Nicholas Jr. was killed by New York Police Department Officer Brian George in 1994.
“I’m not only mourning for my son, but I’m mourning for my husband’s son who has been killed,” she said quietly.