I was taking care of his kids, going to work, and helping my other children process their brother’s murder. I couldn’t have accomplished what I needed to if I had cried sooner.

If I see a car that looks like Darien’s or the sunlight hits just right, all of the sadness comes flooding back.

I’d put up reward posters, hoping somebody would say they knew what happened. Someone knew something, but they just wouldn’t give me any answers.

After a neighbor fatally shot her son in 2001, Dr. Dorothy Johnson-Speight started the anti-violence group Mothers in Charge. “I thought maybe two people would show up; the room was jam packed.”

When Rebecca Figueroa was arrested two months into her pregnancy, she didn’t worry because she wasn’t guilty. But seven months later, she was still in jail and totally unprepared for a high-risk pregnancy, childbirth in restraints and the constant fear of losing her daughter.

Between scant information, limited phone time and insensitive staff, prison compounded a profound loss.

“I’ve seen disasters averted because an inmate said these simple words: 'What would your mother think?'”