Courtney Crowder

ccrowder@dmreg.com

Katrina Johnson arrived with a frenzied flourish at the nondescript alley where her oldest son, Kedarie, was murdered. Wearing the same all-white ensemble she’d worn to his funeral, she was late for the memorial she spent months planning and questions spilled from her like water from a jug: Who wasn’t there yet? Where were the star-shaped balloons she had purchased special for the occasion? Had anyone brought gloves?

But turning to face the overgrowth Thursday where her son’s body was found a year ago to the day, Johnson stopped short. Her face dropped and her tempo changed. As though walking through water, she approached slowly, rolling sobs heaving out of her chest as she inched closer.

Through screams, she teetered like a house of cards. She barely held her body up before collapsing over and over again into the arms of whoever was nearest.

Her struggle to keep footing was symbolic of how Johnson and, on some level, the city of Burlington have dealt with the murder ofKedarie, a gregarious, well-liked and well-known high school junior who was found shot to death, his torso marked by bullet holes and his body left in a patch of overgrown grass. Moving on isn’t an option, Kedarie’s family and close friends said, but when they fall in their walk through grief, the community is there to catch them.

In the year since the tragedy, the community has tried to embrace the light with which Kedarie lived his life despite the darkness of his death. Losing Kedarie, who by most accounts had no enemies, was in many ways a wakeup call to the South Hill neighborhood where his body was found and the city writ large to try to stem the violence in Burlington, community members said. Since then, community meetings have been held, police have made efforts to be on the streets regularly both in uniform and out of uniform, school members make themselves available when Kedarie’s memory brings back too much pain, and neighbors keep a more detailed watch over each other.

“He might be gone, but he’s not forgotten,” said Shaunda Campbell, director of the career center at Burlington High School and a mentor to Kedarie. “Not only in that I have his picture all over my office, but in that I try to live my life as he would have wanted: To find the joy in every day and to laugh and to help lift others up and to keep a smile on my face no matter what.”

In January, Des Moines County District Attorney Amy Beavers announced first-degree murder charges against two men, Jaron Narelle Purham and Jorge Luis Sanders-Galvez. Both were already in custody in their home state of Missouri when they were charged and one is scheduled to be extradited Monday, the Des Moines County sheriff confirmed.

While police worked swiftly by most accounts — they handed over their case file in April, according to the Burlington Hawk Eye — the wheels of justice turned slowly after that. For months, Beavers told the paper she was waiting to get evidence, which she declined to detail, back from the state crime lab.

“The entire process has been overwhelming because we watch shows like ‘The First 48’ or ‘CSI’ and we expect things to happen quickly,” Campbell said. “Sometimes maybe you are lucky and that happens, but most of the time you aren’t and justice doesn’t come swiftly. But I know justice is coming.”

News of Kedarie’s murder spread nationwide as he was reported to be a transgender teen killed because of his gender identity. But 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, leggings and glitter, and sometimes went by the name Kandicee. He had girlfriends, friends said, but mostly liked men.

At 16, he was exploring his identity and his options for the future when “his light was snuffed out before it reached its full potential,” said Jenna Sansone, the owner of the house outside of which Kedarie’s body was found.

“He never got a chance to live and that’s the tragedy of this whole thing,” Sansone said. “I’m a retired nurse, I’ve seen death, and when it is someone who is sick who passes there is a feeling that death is a release, maybe a blessing. Here, there are none of those. He didn’t want to die and he didn’t get a chance to live, so you are left asking why. Why him? Why here? This doesn’t happen in Burlington.”

For Kedarie's mother, the question of why is the only thing that drags her out of bed in the morning, she said. She moves through life with a darkness over her, but a pointed focus.

“We will bring justice for my son,” she said. “I won’t rest until it happens.”

The light wasn’t on

On the night Kedarie was killed, Johnson knew something was wrong when her living room light wasn’t on. She normally came home late after working at the casino. Despite having to go to school in the morning, Kedarie stayed up to make sure his mother got home OK.

“If I could turn back time, I wouldn’t have gone to work,” Johnson said. “I blame myself. … If I would have been here, I would have saved my boy.”

People tell her she has survivor’s guilt, she said, and her friends constantly repeat that there’s nothing she could’ve done. But she disagrees. Her mama bear instinct says she could have taken the bullet for her son.

Johnson’s house is a living memorial to her son. Photos and collages made in the wake of the tragedy hang on the walls. The teddy bears and knickknacks people brought to the crime scene sit in a line on the only couch in the house.

As friends dropped by to visit the grieving mother Thursday, the memorial video that played at Kedarie’s funeral looped in the background. The day before, she’d watched it for hours and cried, said Demetrius Perkins, Johnson’s husband.

Johnson has another son, Cedric, but the bond she shares with him is different than the bond she had with Kedarie, she said. It’s like with one piece missing, the puzzle that was their family just isn’t right.

“I can’t tell Cedric let’s go get our hair done,” she said. “I can’t ask him what I should wear. I can’t take him to get his nails done. Those were the things I did with Kedarie and those are gone now.”

'Enough is enough'

Though the wound is still fresh for Katrina Johnson, time marches on for the town. Sansone cleaned up the memorial site behind her house a few months after the shooting and the nearby garage that once had a mural for the teenager has been painted over.

But as the town moves on, they don’t forget, said local pastor Nathan Williams.

After Kedarie’s death, there was a feeling that “enough was enough,” said Williams, who runs a community center less than a mile from the murder site.

“In every city, there are different communities based on race and social economic status and they don’t cross over very much, but in this case you see a general coming together of all people,” he said. “Even if they didn’t know Kedarie, they know him through stories and what they heard, and they are coming together to say what happened was not right.”

While the Burlington Police Department’s annual report doesn’t show a rise in crime, many, including Williams, said they feel crime is rising.

Burlington had three homicides in 2015. In the previous four years, it had four total. In 2016, the Hawk Eye wrote about increases in gun violence, including at least a half-dozen shootings that took place in October and November, a few of them in broad daylight.

In Kedarie’s case, the police conducted more than 100 interviews with nearly 60 people, said Lt. Greg Allen. And they collected lots of evidence, more than 200 specific pieces, according to the Hawk Eye.

By many accounts, the police have been dogged in their investigations of this and other crimes.

“Over the years people have said, 'Hey, let’s take back Burlington' and they mean it in an unhealthy way,” Williams said, “but more recently it has been in a more healthy positive way of talking about the violence and supporting our police officers and inviting them into our neighborhoods.”

“Without Kedarie, we wouldn’t be talking about it,” Williams said. “Now people are meeting, people are thinking. There is love flowing and people are reaching out to our community. That’s because of Kedarie.”

The road ahead

When news broke in January that two men had been accused of the crime, Johnson took to Facebook, posting a celebration video.

“I fought so hard and now I got what I have been fighting for,” she said, spinning around her home. “I have been crying all day.”

Johnson is nervous for the trial but is still overjoyed that there are people charged with her son’s murder. She’ll never get over losing Kedarie; she’ll never have closure, she said. But she can have justice, which, without the ability to bring her son back, is all she wants.

“My heart will never heal, never,” she said. “There will always be a hole. But I can know he’s resting easy when people finally are put away for taking his smile and his light and his joy away from me.”

At the murder site, Johnson collected herself enough to hand out the vibrant star-shaped balloons to mourners. Declaring her love for Kedarie, Johnson and the gathered let their balloons go only to have them get stuck in a nearby tree.

“There you are, Kedarie!” Johnson screamed, laughing and starting to dance. “We see you, baby. We know you are watching over us.”

To her, Kedarie’s star will never dim.