Joe Kennedy references slain Burke student and Brigham doctor during gun control sit-in
When Congressman Joe Kennedy III took the podium during the sit-in held by House Democrats on Wednesday calling for action on gun-control, he shared the stories of two local victims of gun violence.
First, he spoke of Raekwon Brown, a 17-year-old student at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester who was fatally shot near his school earlier this month. Kennedy’s reference of Brown came the same day two men were arrested and charged with his murder.
“He loved basketball,” Kennedy said of Brown. “He was an aspiring rappist. By all accounts he was a funny, polite, happy child. His mom said good bye to him that morning, and he never came home that afternoon.”
Too often, Kennedy said, the stories of victims of gun violence are lost in the epidemic’s statistics.
“All of those facts, all of those numbers are someone who loves and is loved,” he said.
He and his colleagues are “blessed” with the ability to ensure other families don’t “have to say goodbye to their child when they walk to school in the morning and have them never come back.”
All of those lost to gun violence are people who love and have been loved. Watch my #NoBillNoBreak speech here: https://t.co/ICaTqtXTs2
— Joe Kennedy III (@joekennedy) June 22, 2016
Later, the congressman representing the 4th District of Massachusetts spoke of Dr. Michael Davidson, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who was fatally shot by the son of a former patient in January 2015. He explained to those in the House chamber how the 44-year-old doctor was killed months before the birth of his fourth child and read a letter written by Davidson’s widow, Dr. Terri Halperin.
In the letter, Halperin wrote of how for months after her husband was killed, she would wake up at night, seeing images of him with his killer.
“I imagined what he must have thought in those first moments when he was shot,” she wrote. “I pictured him running, as I was told that he had done. I saw his injuries. I cried thinking of his pain. That happened every night for a long time.”
She described how she jumped every time she heard a loud noise and cried through July 4th fireworks because they sounded like gunshots. She wrote that she had been doing better, but following Orlando massacre, found herself crying every day for the families of the victims.
“I have cried for all those families who see the images of their loved one’s murderer in their head,” her letter read. “They may not have been there, but they will see it. They will close their eyes and witness their last moments. They will see the panic, they will feel the pain.”
She questioned why nothing has been done to prevent gun violence.
“We have been silent too long,” she wrote. “Wake up congressmen. Your nation is calling, and we are angry. We want something done.”
Watch Kennedy read Halperin’s letter, beginning around 58:00, here.
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