Three mothers who said they lost their sons at the hands of police in Cincinnati endured the rain Saturday afternoon to speak at a rally and plead for help in holding the officers involved accountable.
A group of about 40 individuals attended the rally and listened as the mothers spoke about the heartache they’ve endured from the loss of their sons.
The Anti-Police Brutality Coalition sponsored the demonstration, saying the focus needs to be on helping these families that have been impacted by police brutality and the need to reopen their cases.
Anternitia O’Neal’s son, Dontez O’Neal, was shot and killed by Cincinnati Police Department Officer Orlando Smith in 2012.
O'Neal spoke about how she’s been fighting for the past nine years to hold the officer accountable.
O’Neal discounts the official report regarding her son’s death, saying witnesses give a different account of what happened from what Smith claimed.
“We can still get the criminal case open and I need someone to help me get it reopened. The civil case, I don’t care about that. I don’t care about the money; my son’s life is worth much more than that. This is about getting justice,” O’Neal said.
She said it was encouraging seeing the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, but O'Neal wants that same justice for her son and other families impacted by police brutality.
The impact of what happened that night to her son follows her to this day. A mother’s suffering and grief are forever, O'Neal said.
“But I want to turn my pain into power. It takes a toll on you but we have to keep fighting," O’Neal said
Robin Scott is the mother of Melvin Murray Jr. who died in 2016 when he slammed into a tree following a police chase.
Scott said the full details of what happened leading up to her son's death weren’t revealed to her following the crash.
She had to fight to get information like the dashcam video that showed the officers insulting her son at the scene and delaying getting him treatment, Scott said.
She added that since her son’s death, she’s been suffering from depression, and continuing to fight for justice gets hard.
Scott pulled out the picture of her son she keeps with her at all times during the rally and showed it to the crowd.
“It took everything for me to come out here today. I cried all night. This hurts. It hurts when you can’t hug your child. When you can’t talk to your child. I couldn’t get out of the bed but I had to because I was thinking about my child,” Scott said.
To keep seeing cases of other children getting killed by police also hurts, Scott said. It’s why she’s going to keep fighting for change despite the difficulty, she said.
Audrey DuBose also spoke at the rally. She is the mother of Sam DuBose who was fatally shot by a University of Cincinnati police officer during a traffic stop in 2015.
She said her family hasn't been the same since the death of her son and they still struggle with that loss to this day.
"It's hard. I can't call and talk to my children without them breaking down. They're fighting a hard battle because they're still working to get accountability," DuBose said.
The mothers said change needs to happen to prevent other families from suffering this same kind of loss. They vowed to support one another in the fight for justice.
The Anti-Police Brutality Coalition said there will be another rally to support impacted families on May 15.
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