Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

In the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, reporter DeNeen L. Brown tells the story of Valencia Mohammed, a woman investigating the murder of her sons. Brown writes:

WHAT IS A MOTHER TO DO when two of her sons are shot to death in the District of Columbia, where so many young black boys have been slain in the past decades, one after the other? Enough black boys over the years to fill so many school buses, so many classrooms, vanished like a vanishing tribe?

What is a mother to do when she doesn't think police are moving fast enough? What is a mother to do when her son's so-called friends go silent, won't tell the truth to police, although they saw it all -- right there on Rittenhouse Street, that bright sunny day, 4:30 in the afternoon, rush hour, Thursday, October 28, 2004, watching the killer pump bullets into her son as if he were a target in a video game? When her son sits dying in the driver's seat, engine running, driver's door wide open, loaded .380 semiautomatic pistol on his body, bullet wounds in his chest and neck? People see it, and people close their blinds.

Read the whole story here.