crime

Bearing the Unbearable: Cathy Rickmon and Martha Bullock

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This article is part of an ongoing series of photo stories by Sabree Hill about mothers who have lost children to gun crime in New Orleans. Many of the mothers now hope to become a “new army” against street violence through the Helping Mothers Heal group at the Family Center of Hope. A version of this article first appeared in Gambit. Cathy Rickmon and Martha Bullock had been casual friends for years, but a burst of violence in Mid-City sealed their fates together forever. “We weren’t close until the tragedy of our sons,” Rickmon said.

crime

Bearing the Unbearable: Margaret Washington

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This article is part of an ongoing series of photo stories by Sabree Hill about mothers who have lost children to gun crime in New Orleans. Many of the mothers now hope to become a “new army” against street violence through the Helping Mothers Heal group at the Family Center of Hope. A version of this article first appeared in Gambit. Marguerite LaJoy Washington came to her adoptive mother Margaret Washington at 3 months old, and from the beginning she was the family’s princess. “She was my shadow,” said Washington, a former nursing instructor.

crime

Bearing the Unbearable: Ann Dimes

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This article is part of an ongoing series of photo stories by Sabree Hill about mothers who have lost children to gun crime in New Orleans. Many of the mothers now hope to become a “new army” against street violence through the Helping Mothers Heal group at the Family Center of Hope. A version of this article first appeared in Gambit. On a May evening in 2011, Ann Dimes stood outside a Ninth Ward home with her 26-year-old son, Danny Joseph Roberts. Roberts had been through a bout with a kidney stone, and Dimes, a surgical technician, wanted to check on him.

crime

Bearing the Unbearable: Lynn James

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This article is part of an ongoing series of photo stories by Sabree Hill about mothers who have lost children to gun crime in New Orleans. Many of the mothers now hope to become a “new army” against street violence through the Helping Mothers Heal group at the Family Center of Hope. A version of this article first appeared in Gambit.When 26-year-old Christopher Guilbeau Jr. was shot on Elysian Fields Avenue in 2007, he survived but was stricken blind. When he suddenly died from his injuries in 2009, it was his mother’s life that plunged into darkness. “The people who are doing the murdering are not just hurting the mothers and the fathers of the child they are hurting,” Lynn James said.

church

Mothers of murder victims become “new army” against street violence

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The grief that follows the loss of a child to violence is one of the most unbearable burdens life can impose on a mother. It is one of life’s mysteries, then, that by gathering a dozen such heavy souls in one room, the burden on all of them becomes lighter. “It hurts deeply to lose a kid, and you just don’t know why,” said Ann Dimes, a member of the “Helping Mothers Heal” group at the Watson Teaching Ministries on St. Charles Avenue. “So you reach out to another mother, another sister …

crime

11-year-old girl killed, others injured in shooting at west-Carrollton home

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An 11-year-old girl died Monday and two other people were wounded after several gunmen opened fire on the west-Carrollton home where they were all sleepign, New Orleans police said. A family was inside a home in the 1300 block of General Ogden Street (between Plum and Willow, about a block off the upriver end of Oak) around 12:15 a.m., when unknown assailants began firing on the house, said NOPD Officer Garry Flot, a departmental spokesman. An 11-year-old girl was hit in the head and taken to the hospital in critical condition, and she died around five hours later, Flot said. Also in the house were another 11-year-old girl who was hit in the right hand and elbow, and a 38-year-old man who was hit in the back, but their injuries were not considered life threatening, Flot said. Two other adults and several other children (whose ages range from 4 to 9 years old) sleeping inside the house were not injured, authorities said.