'Everything is just gone': a mother reflects on the killing of her son by police

Andrea Robinson’s diary after her 19-year-old son’s shooting. Zoe Sullivan reports.

Andrea Irwin’s audio diary begins with her reflections on the night of 5 March 2015, when her 19-year-old son, Tony Robinson Jr, was killed by a white police officer in Madison, Wisconsin.

The next day, the Guardian asked if I could report on what had happened. One of the first events I attended was a vigil in front of the house where Tony was shot, and this moment is captured early on in the diary.

About a week after Tony’s funeral, which was attended by more than 1,000 people, I interviewed Andrea for the first time. She described what happened when she went to the hospital after learning about the shooting.

Shortly after Freddy Gray was killed in Baltimore on 19 April 2015, provoking an uprising in the city, I asked Andrea if she would be willing to keep an audio diary. A few days later, she returned home from the Million Mom March in Washington DC, where she had met with mothers from across the country whose children had been killed by police. That’s when she received a call from the district attorney’s office. It was Mother’s Day, and they told her they would be announcing a decision about whether to indict the officer.

Less than a week later, the district attorney announced the decision: no indictment.

This moment is captured in the diary, as are the family’s press conference and the protests that followed. But most of the diary is devoted to the life of Andrea, her relationship with her children, how they coped with losing Tony and the decision not to indict. We follow her as she visits with family at Christmas, about nine months after Tony was killed, and after she and her ex-husband, Tony’s father, received a settlement from the city of Madison for Tony’s death. Andrea’s diary is a rare glimpse into how police killings affect families and communities long after the media has gone away.

“The life I had – everything is just gone,” she said. “Today, I’m a better person. But it was not like that for a long time. I went through a very dark place. I feel like I went to my definition of what a hell would be.”

Zoe Sullivan is an audio producer, photographer and journalist who focuses on social and environmental justice issues, and especially gender. Her work has appeared on NPR, the BBC, DW, and Pacific Standard Magazine. She divides her time between Wisconsin and South America and is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and Italian. She holds a master’s degree from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. For more, click here, or follow her on Twitter.

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