Three months after a homicide: Dovon Harris, continued

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(Note: HR has been following the experiences of Watts resident Barbara Pritchett, below, whose 15-year-old son Dovon died from a homicide on June 17, 2007. (See: ‘Dovon Harris: One Month Gone By’ and ‘Two Months Gone By.’ ) On Tuesday, the Report checked in on Pritchett to talk about her life three months after the murder.)

This time, Barbara Pritchett cried throughout the interview.

She had not done this before. It’s typical of how things have been, she said. She’s been crying more in recent weeks. ‘I try to go on with my life. But I think about him every day--minute by minute,’ she said. ‘And I am starting to really, truly miss him.’

That part is new, she said--the acute sense of his absence. Events without Dovon have begun to accumulate. Each new milestone carries new pain: School starting. His 16th birthday coming up. A planned family reunion.

‘I miss my baby so bad, I really do. Before I was trying to be so strong.... But it is so hard. I miss him so much.’

Pritchett also has started being nagged by a small, troubling thought: ‘I think maybe I still don’t accept my baby’s death,’ she said. ‘It seems like a dream to me. Like he is just gone somewhere. I don’t think the toll has taken effect yet.’

It makes her afraid. She has a vague sense of reality lurking, waiting for her. ‘I hope I don’t wind up with some kind of breakdown,’ she said.

Pritchett has made plans to go back to work. A job as a home health care worker is waiting for her. She is apprehensive, worried about not being able to control her crying.

For now, her days are filled with tasks for other family members. She provides day care for her 18-month old nephew Kilien (above), and looks after her 11-year-old younger brother.

Each day, she hopes to get through her morning routine without dwelling on Dovon. If she can get through breakfast, and take her brother to school, ‘It might be a good day,’ she said.

A bad day is when she wakes up early, goes downstairs alone, thinking about Dovon.

Often she stays in the house. She goes to the cemetery. She brings balloons to the place where they shot Dovon, and tapes them to a light post. She thinks about the killers, who are facing trial. She has imaginary conversations. She asks them, ‘Why?’

Recently, she had her first dream about Dovon. He came back. Family members touched him and asked, ‘Is it really you?’ and Dovon smiled. A knock woke her. ‘I knew it wasn’t real,’ she said. ‘But I would give anything for it to have been real.’

She talked to transplant people, who told her Dovon’s donated organs have saved four men’s lives.

Pritchett wants to meet the recipients. They told her it was not a sure thing: The recipients might feel uncomfortable. ‘Sometimes they feel bad about where their organs were taken from,’ Pritchett explained.

Recently, Pritchett was home and heard a gunshot. Just a shot in the air, she thought. Later she went out and there was yellow police tape on the street. It was a homicide--committed within throwing distance of her apartment building. Pritchett fell apart.

She is getting used to saying, ‘My son was murdered.’ At first it sounded too harsh, she said. But it’s the truth, she said, and people need to see it.

‘I think people think this happens to people whose parents are not involved in their lives. They think it’s all just gang members, or that the parents are not around,’ she said. ‘They just don’t know.’