By Johnetta Doss
The St. Louis police officer on the phone confirmed my name, then asked, “Does your daughter see a dentist?”
I knew it was something bad but never thought it was murder until the detectives asked to meet with me. Then I knew my baby was gone, because the detectives don’t just come meet you for nothing.
They sat me and her dad in the back of a patrol car. Then they pulled out a picture of my baby lying on the ground. I screamed so loud, I think everyone in the world heard me. It was the visual I just kept seeing over and over when I closed my eyes — it was just horrible for a mother to have to identify her child in that way.
It still haunts me to this day, but I keep praying and asking a higher power for strength to make it another day because I know it’s another mother out there who needs me.
Carieal was spending the night at my mother’s house, but I later learned someone she knew had picked her up. Two hours later, someone shot her in the back of the head. From what the police told me, she probably didn’t know it was coming. And then the killer just left her where he killed her.
After I lost Carieal, my life spiraled. I turned to alcohol as a means of numbing my pain. I was suicidal and ended up in the psych ward twice, diagnosed with PTSD. My health declined and I had a heart attack within the first three months after losing her.
My family tried to help, but it was fruitless. As this was the outset of the pandemic, I was locked down at home with literally nobody to turn to. I grieved completely alone and kept thinking, “She’s going to come through that door.”
Police picked up her killer a week later thanks to an anonymous tip, and the gun was with him. At least there would be justice — but then the charges against her killer were dropped because the prosecutor mishandled evidence and botched the case.
It was like losing Carieal all over again. But in the middle of my pain, I found a way to honor my daughter and help other mothers suffering the same loss. Our lives continue after tragedy, and although there is never a return to “normal” after losing a loved one, we can either remain in the loss or we can honor their lives by helping others.
My cousin encouraged me to write about Carieal. Every day she told me to write. That made me angry, but she continued to push me. Then one day, I found a blank notebook on the kitchen table with a pencil beside it. I had no idea where the words came from — I still don’t know. So I wrote. Writing each day was so easy, and yet so hard. But eventually, my work culminated in a book titled “Six Minutes of Freedom.”
Carieal had planned to go skydiving that June. She could not wait. But she died two months before, so I went skydiving for her. It took three minutes to fly up and three minutes to skydive down. And during those six minutes, I had peace for the first time after losing her. I was free for those six minutes — thus the title of our story.
The book brought me to Atlanta, where I connected with Sylvia, a woman who had also lost her daughter. She told me about a Woodson Center project called Voices of Black Mothers United.
There I met mothers who knew how I felt, mothers who had gone through losing a child to violence before me. Meeting so many mothers who truly understood and knew my pain was foreign to me. Other grief groups did help me, but they didn’t ignite that spark in me to help others.
After Sylvia swooped in and helped me, I knew I had to help other mothers like me. These mothers are grieving, but the world continues to go on around them. We live knowing our child will not come home.
On April 28, I hosted a Victims and Survivors Ball. It was a formal ball with awards for survivors of violence and their supporters. The reason I wanted to have a ball is because Carieal never got to attend prom or graduation. So I thought to myself: I’ll have this ball as her prom yearly. My main goal was to help these mothers know they are loved and feel good about the grief work they’ve accomplished.
Like all of these mothers, the pain of losing my daughter is always with me. Some days I feel it will overtake me. And the pain of the prosecutor denying her justice makes it worse.
But I get up daily because of the other mothers who, wholeheartedly, hold me physically, emotionally and mentally. For those who have lost a child to violence or know someone who has, I pray they have the same kind of people holding them.
Johnetta Doss is a St. Louis-based representative of Voices of Black Mothers United.
Read the full op-ed here.