Lisa Reisman Photo
Latasha Brown at Saturday’s event at the Botanical Garden of Healing Dedicated to Victims of Gun Violence.
Latasha Brown’s wails tore through a quiet, sun-dappled Saturday morning as she cradled a red brick bearing the name and age of her son, Tashawn Eddie Brown.
“I don’t know if I’m gonna heal, so all I can do is make sure people say his name so he’s not forgotten,” Latasha Brown said, after laying the brick into the Magnitude Walkway at the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing Dedicated to Victims of Gun Violence.
The walkway is lined with bricks with the names and ages of every victim lost to gun violence in New Haven dating back to 1976. The brick honoring Tashawn was among 10 newly laid in memory of recent homicide victims on Saturday. In 2021, New Haven has seen 22 homicides.
Latasha Brown called her son her best friend, her confidant. He watched out for his seven brothers and sisters. After some struggles in his teens, he graduated from Hillhouse with a full scholarship to Porter & Chester Institute with plans to become an electrician.
On the evening of May 19, he was shot and killed on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. He was 18.
Marlene Miller Pratt, one of the driving forces behind the memorial garden.
The park was created by mothers of gun violence victims with assistance from the Urban Resources Initiative. In June, it opened at 105 Valley St. as a site of hope and healing as well as a place to build public awareness of the crisis of gun violence in the city.
“This day is bittersweet,” said Marlene Miller Pratt, among the mothers who made the garden a reality.
“It’s bitter because we know they’re gone, but what’s so sweet is they will not be forgotten,” she said as she stood against the dramatic backdrop of West Rock.
“Too many times, there’s a gun shooting, and we have our vigils, and people come by the house, and there are candles, and balloons, and flowers, but then the candle goes out, the balloon deflates, the flowers wilt and die,” she said.
“Just like you see a Holocaust museum, a Vietnam memorial, they are not going to be forgotten; 50, 60, years from now, people will remember that they were taken from us too soon,” she said.
“The hope is that when people walk upon these bricks, when they see all these names, that they will wake up to this problem.”
Ana Bonilla, mother of Kevan Bonilla, at right, with Nayhelis Olmo, Kevan’s girlfriend.
For Bridgeport’s Nayhelis Olmo, girlfriend of Kevan Bonilla, the park is “a place to come and visit whenever we want, to sit down, and talk to him by the river. We are very grateful.”
Olmo and Bonilla’s mother Ana laid a brick in his memory.
Bonilla was a gifted boxer who competed in the Junior Olympics and qualified for the national championships in 2017. He was also, his mother said, “special, one-of-a-kind, a great son who was good to people and loved God.”
Miller Pratt, who taught Kevan at Geraldine Johnson Middle School, recalled him as a leader.
“Kevan was ready to take the lead in everything,” she said. He was also protective. “I was new at the school, and he’d always say ‘Miss Miller Pratt, I got you, don’t worry about anything here,’ and he’d show me his fists. He was already winning medals in boxing by then.’”
In the early morning hours of July 10, Bonilla was shot and killed in Fair Haven. He was 20.
“That hit me hard,” Miller Pratt said. “He always pushed himself beyond his expectations. Once he reached a goal, he would move on to the next. He had such a bright future.”
Bricks were also laid Saturday in memory of Danielle Monique Taft, who was shot to death back in 1994 at the age of 7 months; and 2021 homicide victims Miguel Angel Ramos, Ciera Lashay Jones, Richard Lamar Whitaker Jr., Zaire Luciano, Adrian Barwise, Tyshaun Hargrove, and Mariyah Nakhoune-Inthirath.
Hippy Nakhoune, father of Mariyah Nakhoune-Inthirath.
Hippy Nakhoune said he felt mixed emotions on seeing his daughter’s name on a brick.
Mariyah Nakhoune-Inthirath, an aspiring model from Bridgeport, died after suffering a single gunshot wound on Sheffield Avenue on May 15. She was 20.
“Part of me feels bad,” he said. “I don’t want to have my daughter remembered on a brick. I want my daughter to be remembered for doing something for the world. But the other part of me feels that now I can come here and get some sense of peace when I’m feeling stressed out or depressed or when I’m really thinking about her.”
His daughter “was an amazing, outgoing, people person,” he said. “She was the light of the party. She had a way of knowing how to put a smile on someone’s face when they were feeling down.”
By then, Latasha Brown was leading a group of Tashawn’s brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends onto the lawn with a gaggle of blue balloons, his favorite color. An eagle swooped above. The group looked to the sky. Then Latasha Brown began a chant.
“Say his name,” she called out.
“Tashawn Eddie Brown,” they responded.
“Say his name,” she called out again, more loudly.
“Tashawn Eddie Brown,” they shouted, his name carrying through the park.
The New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing is at 105 Valley St. 203 – 432-6570; https://uri.yale.edu/botanical-garden-healing
"The hope is that ... [we] will wake up to this problem."
Yes.