When an adult holds a child’s hands, a promise is implied.
“I got you,” the gesture says.
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“I’ll protect you,” it assures.
A child is supposed to feel safe, maybe even at their safest, in that space, which makes what happened to a 5-year-old on a D.C. street this month so painful to envision.
Sedrick Miller was holding the child’s hand and carrying a baby in a car seat at around 8:30 a.m. when a mundane moment suddenly turned into a traumatic one. As Miller walked with his children in a Northeast Washington neighborhood on March 4, a man approached and fired several shots. Miller, who was 42, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Afterward, Police Cmdr. William FitzGerald described the shooting as “disturbing” and “one of the most horrible things we’ve had here in the 5th District in several years.” Members of the public used the words “heartless,” “senseless” and “soulless” to describe what happened. They spoke of feeling horrified, heartbroken and sick and tired of seeing children caught up in the city’s gun violence.
Man fatally shot while walking with infant, 5-year-old in Northeast D.C., police say
“As I pick up my children I can’t help but to think about two children in our city witnessed the adult caring for them get murdered … this is nauseating,” D.C. native and community activist Tony Lewis Jr. tweeted that day. “We have sunken to a new low. God Help Us.”
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When the city’s homicide numbers are tallied at the end of the year, Miller will be counted. His children won’t. But they, too, are victims of the city’s gun violence. They, too, are part of its toll. And when we discuss how that violence is affecting local communities and what resources are needed to help address that, those uncounted victims matter.
This is not about Miller’s past and if and how it relates to that shooting. That’s for police to investigate. This is about his future — those two children. They were not hit by any bullets, but they were harmed. Common sense and studies tell us that.
“In some ways, they may be more of a victim than the person who died,” Victor Vieth says. “The person who is murdered, their pain ends when the heartbeat stops. But for the child who witnesses it, they may have decades of suffering in front of them.”
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Vieth is a former prosecutor who now works with the Zero Abuse Project, an organization that receives funding from the Justice Department and trains law enforcement professionals across the nation on how to work with children who witness crimes or are victims of them. That training can involve discussing with detectives the importance of interviewing those children in comfortable environments and not sterile police stations, and offering arguments prosecutors can use.
When we talk about what Miller’s children witnessed, Vieth stresses the importance of them receiving trauma-informed responses and points to studies that tell of the challenges they might face.
“We know from research that witnessing violence impacts a child, even an infant,” he says. “They may struggle with sleeping and eating. They may have anxiety issues. They may be harder to soothe.”
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They may not remember an event in the traditional way we think of memories, he says, but they can still store it. Years later, a certain smell or sound may take them back to that moment.
“The 5-year-old is probably always going to have a very clear memory of what happened,” he says. “And we know from the research it could have a profound impact on their medical and mental health throughout their life. It could also have a spiritual impact.”
Killing a parent who is holding a child’s hand sends a “clear message” to that child, he says. It can force them, he says, to go from thinking, “Dad will protect me; dad will guide me; dad will be there for me” to “Someone has murdered my father in front of me, and my dad couldn’t stop that, so what is safe anymore?”
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Jennifer Long, who is the co-founder of AEquitas, a Washington-based organization that provides resources to prosecutors and holds the goal of “ultimately preventing future acts of violence,” says sometimes children happen to be witnesses and sometimes perpetrators want them to bear witness as an extra punishment.
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“There is a level of disregard,” she says. “But then there is also a level of someone who is so violent, so hateful, that committing the act in front of the children is part of the crime — it’s part of the injury they are trying to cause.”
The first time I spoke to Long was in 2014 when I was reporting on a story about child witnesses to violence. I interviewed a young man who was 9 when he saw his mother stabbed 27 times with a kitchen knife by his stepfather. The boy was 14 when we sat at a table together and listened to the 911 call he had made.
‘Don’t kill her!’ Children who witness domestic violence carry lifelong scars
“Please! Don’t kill her!” he could be heard shouting during the call.
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I also spoke at that time to a man who, at 10, was sitting in the back seat of his mother’s car with his five siblings when her ex-boyfriend opened the door and fatally shot her as she sat in the driver’s seat.
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“I saw my mother slouched over and blood coming out of her ear,” that man recalled. He described how he got out of the car, hurried to his mother’s side and tried to sit her upright. “I looked in my mother’s eyes and told her it was going to be okay. Then I ran into the house and called 911.”
His sister told me of the shooter: “He didn’t just take something from my mom. He took something from me.”
I think of those voices every time I hear of a homicide taking place in front of a child, and I’ve been thinking of them more than usual lately. This year, despite only being three months into it, several of those types of cases have occurred in the District.
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In January, 27-year-old Sierra Johnson was sitting in a car when she was shot and killed. She was four months pregnant and her children, ages 2 and 4, were sitting in the back seat.
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In February, Pamela Thomas was riding in an SUV with her 8-year-old son when she was fatally shot. They had been on their way to a birthday party.
On March 4, I learned of Miller’s death in the same way as many people in the region — through social media. A post from the Twitter account killmoenews, which tracks police activity in the region, read: “HOMICIDE UPDATE: A FATHER WAS HOLDING HIS CHILD’S HAND AND ANOTHER CHILD IN A CARRIER WHEN SOMEONE WALKED UP TO HIM AND SHOT HIM MULTIPLE TIMES IN FRONT OF AN APARTMENT BUILDING THIS MORNING.”
On Thursday night, a post from that account read: “Woman shot in head while sitting in her vehicle at 17th and Benning Rd NE DC. KIDS REPORTED IN VEHICLE.”
Deshaun Cupid was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. She was 30. The children who were in the car with her were ages 1 and 2.
They were not hit by any bullets. They also weren’t unharmed.