LOUISVILLE, Ky. -A 13-year-old kid and his 12-year-old friend were shot and killed in Louisville 24 hours apart, and family members believe someone targeted their young lives.
“I want to know what’s wrong with this picture,” Dawn Brown said, covering her face with a ski mask at the outset of an interview with WDRB to demonstrate her point. “So I could look like all the other small boys around here.
“Anybody that has a ski mask on and in 90-degree weather, something’s not right.”
Brown claimed she confiscated these masks from her 13-year-old son, DaViawn Blackmon. “I got every last one. “I searched and seized his room daily as if I were the Louisville Metro (police) or the Secret Service,” Brown stated. “Because I knew something wasn’t right.”
Brown admitted to being in a war with the streets for her son. Blackmon, the youngest of seven children, enjoyed driving and laughing.
“I felt like my son was being manipulated,” she claimed. “And I feel like my son was being used.”
However, relatives claimed he was being drawn toward gang life.
“We cried out for help, cried out for help, cried out for help, and nobody listened,” Blackmon’s sister, Rolanda Hamilton, stated.
At the age of 13, Blackmon had already been entangled in the juvenile justice system. His family reported he had recently completed a nine-month home imprisonment. They also stated that they attempted interventions, mentoring programs, and even mental health hospitalizations and exams.
“Nothing has helped,” Brown explained. “My son was diagnosed with ADHD and ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder), and I have advocated for him. I’ve battled to get him help.”
It all culminated last week, when Blackmon was shot in the head and left for dead near 38th and Broadway on June 27.
“It’s almost like I knew this was going to happen,” Hamilton added, her eyes welling up with tears. “I just did not know that it would be at 13.”
His mother stated that he asked for $400 days before the shooting. When she declined, he allegedly slashed the furniture in their home with a machete WDRB stated.
She had already called the police on him.
“Lock him up, please,” I asked. He requires protection. “My son needs protection; something else is going on,” she explained. He wasn’t arrested.
“He is breaking down because I think that he knew that somebody was trying to kill him, and he couldn’t say anything,” Hamilton told me. “There were multiple murders … multiple murders.”
The next day, authorities said that 12-year-old Justin Johnson was slain in the city’s Phoenix Hill neighborhood.