Courtney Crowder

ccrowder@dmreg.com

BURLINGTON, Ia. — The teenage girl inched toward the open coffin of Kedarie Pierre Johnson, stopping short of the rug where mourners paused to pay respects. Her shoulders convulsed with rolling sobs as she wrapped her arms around her waist and shook her head.

She attempted to approach again, but for every step forward, she took one step back, as though if she never made it to the casket, Johnson’s death wouldn’t be real; if she could just hold off, maybe he would come bounding into the Burlington High School gym like he did so often.

Disbelief was a common reaction to the shooting death of 16-year-old Johnson, a well-liked junior who many said lived life to the beat of his own drum. His body was found last week amid overgrowth in an alley in Burlington’s South Hill neighborhood.

In the wake of Johnson’s death, the greater Burlington area has rallied around his family, doling out hugs and meals as frequently as tissues. And as the family mourns, the community is searching for ways to heal itself from the painful wound of losing a life so young.

“Death comes in many ways: It can be a thief in the night or an angel of mercy,” said Burton Prugh, a funeral director and lifelong Burlington resident. “When people live a long time, you’re celebrating a life well-lived. But when you lose young people who haven’t had a chance to experience life, you’re mourning all the things they will never get to do, the things they will never get to see.”

“When someone is taken like this, it affects the whole community,” he continued. “This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen in Burlington.”

No one was more paralyzed than Kedarie’s mother, Katrina Johnson, who moved to the small Iowa city from Chicago’s South Side five years ago, hoping to escape the city’s systemic violence.

“I (brought) my boys down here for a different life and to have a better life … (to) keep them away from the negativity,” she said the morning after her son’s funeral. The ornate urn holding Kedarie’s ashes sat just out of reach as she waited for a train to Chicago, where she planned to hold a memorial service with his extended family.

Johnson’s killing is the first this year in the Mississippi River town, which has a population of about 25,000. Burlington had three homicides in 2015. In the previous four years, it had four total. Two of last year’s killings remain unsolved.

While there isn’t a rash of violence in Burlington, many in the community said they believe crime is increasing.

The local police have “every detective” working to solve Johnson’s killing, said Lt. Jeff Klein, commander of Burlington’s criminal investigation division, but no arrests have been made. He said there isn’t evidence so far to connect the killing to drugs, gangs or Johnson’s sexual orientation or gender identity, both of which were fluid.

While sometimes reported to be a transgender teen, Johnson’s status isn’t that simple, those who knew him said. Most of the time he presented as male, but he loved to wear hair extensions and sometimes went by the name Kandicee. He had girlfriends, friends said, but also liked men.

In general, he didn’t feel confined to either sex and, at 16, he was on the cusp of “figuring himself out,” said his pastor, Nathan Williams.

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Burlington police balk at calling his death a “hate crime,” but to Katrina Johnson and many other community members, it’s the only answer to the gnawing question of “Why Kedarie?”

“I truly believe that it was a hate crime, I do, because if it wasn’t, he’d still be here,” his mother said.

Her voice caught in her throat as tears emerged from under her sunglasses: “My son was only a child, and because of his sexuality, his life is gone.”

Passing in front of Johnson’s casket, some of the hundreds of students who attended the funeral collapsed into sorrowful wails, while others cried silently. A few let out staccato breaths, a sort of physical manifestation of the jarring effect of seeing a peer in a coffin.

After saying a prayer at the casket, the eyes of Johnson’s friend Demetria Dean were painfully puffy, her face as red as her Chicago Bulls T-shirt.

“I’ve been sending him Facebook messages,” she said, casting her eyes downward. “I know he can’t respond. But I want him to know I’m still here, I still care. Every day since it happened, I’ve been waking up and hoping there’ll be a response. He still responds in my heart.”

Johnson liked to be the center of attention, friends said, and had plans to be famous. He loved to sing, and even more to dance, and was known for his signature boisterous laugh. He’d do cartwheels or take off his shoes and slide down the school hallways on his way to class.

“He had this beautiful smile, and you never caught him down or feeling any kind of way except happy,” said Shaunda Campbell, a Burlington High counselor. “There wasn’t a mean bone in his body.”

And Johnson was selfless, friends said. Mona Ash remembered seeing him one summer morning riding his bike while trying to balance two bursting bags of McDonald’s on his handlebars.

“He said he’d just received his first paycheck,” Ash recalled, “and he wanted to bring his family the biggest breakfast he could buy.”

Heidi Quinn, 33, said if her family was ever running low on food, a bag of groceries would appear at her front door. It was often from Johnson, she said.

Johnson didn’t have enemies, according to schoolmates. He seemed to be friends with everyone.

And even though Johnson was “figuring out” his gender and sexuality, many said kids at school accepted him, calling him whichever name he wanted to use that day, not batting an eye at his leggings, makeup or beloved hair weave.

“He had better hair than I did, which always made me mad,” Alisha Morris, 17, said facetiously, cracking a small grin through her tears.

In the days after the killing, a makeshift memorial of flowers, colorful teddy bears and handmade signs reading “Rest in Paradise Kedarie” sprung up where Johnson’s body was found. When heavy rain hit, a neighbor brought the bears into her house. She returned them as the sun came out, cushioning them from the remaining moisture with garbage bags.

This small kindness is emblematic of how Burlington has come together since Johnson’s death, pastor Williams said. Money was collected to help the family, sympathy flowers were delivered and an overwhelming number of people called, offering to lend a hand, Katrina Johnson said.

“It wasn’t even just people who knew him,” Williams said. “It was people who knew him through people who knew him or just those who heard the news and wanted to help however they could.”

The high school brought in a crisis team of counselors and let students spend the days after the killing in the library. The school even opened its doors to the public, creating a space for anyone who wanted to grieve.

To mourners gathered at the memorial Wednesday, Johnson’s murder is the latest event in what they said feels like an increase in crime. South Hill business owner Dana Atkins said each new incident of violence feels like ripping a Band-Aid off a wound: All the resilience the area has built up tears off immediately, and the hurt is raw again.

As people search for answers, they also begin to point fingers. Some community members described an influx of people coming to Burlington from other parts of the country and bringing “baggage” with them.

“When you find graffiti on garages and businesses and things like that that the community never saw before, you have to take note that something is coming that wasn’t here before,” Atkins said.

But Williams cautioned that painting all nonnative Burlingtonians with the same brush isn’t fair: “I believe the majority of families come here for a better life for their children,” he said. “I do know there are people that aren’t coming here for the betterment of their family and, yes, they bring an element of violence with them.”

Expecting almost a thousand people for Johnson’s funeral, the high school gym’s basketball court was filled with folding chairs. But as students, faculty members and other mourners filed through the reception line, they sat bunched like sardines on the bleachers near the casket, their drawn faces illuminated by the low lamps lighting Johnson’s body.

When the funeral began, Johnson’s brother, Cedric Peterson, crumbled like a tower of blocks, folding in on himself as he wept. His mother got up and hugged her son from behind, his fingers leaving marks on her skin from the intensity of the embrace.

Before the funeral, Katrina Johnson had no idea how much Kedarie meant to the community. But it was clear from the emotion in the room and the stories mourners told her that he was people’s “sunshine.”

“He loved living,” said Campbell, the school counselor. “I am grateful to God that I got to spend the little time with him that I did get to, because he is a special kid to me. You don’t meet people that like in your life very often.”

While Burlington is still reeling from the killing, many in town promised to fight the recent violence and do what they can to help police find justice for Johnson.

“If everybody takes a stand, we can out do the violence,” Atkins said. “We are a community of love and caring (and that) can overpower violence without a doubt.”

Despite this tragedy, Katrina Johnson said she won’t relocate to Chicago.

“I don’t think this town will ever be the same, but I won’t go back home … because I have to think about my (other) son,” she said. “I refuse to take him back.”

When the first chords of the funeral’s last song, Lauryn Hill’s version of the gospel standard “Joyful, Joyful,” began to play over the speakers, Katrina Johnson dried her eyes and readied for the last surprise she’d ever give her son. “I knew I had to stop the tears,” she said.

As the slow, methodical strings of the song’s ballad portion gave way to a pop beat — “Drive the dark of doubt away … Fill us with the light of day” — she jumped up and started dancing with arms outstretched, a bundle of wet Kleenex in one hand.

Soon, more friends and family joined in, focusing their revelry around the casket. Even though their eyes were still puffy and their faces still stained with tears, everyone swaying to the music wore a wide smile.

And in the center was Johnson — just where he would have wanted to be.