It’s been 20 years since her son was murdered, but for Joan Howard, it feels like yesterday.
On Dec. 13, 2003, the east Toronto woman’s eldest son, Kempton, was fatally shot in the hallway outside their ninth-floor apartment at 80 Blake St., near Jones and Danforth avenues.
A well-known local youth worker and basketball coach at the nearby Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre as well as a physiotherapy student at Seneca College, Kempton had just turned 24 a week earlier.
Kempton's death still reverberates in the community 20 years later, underscoring the lasting impacts of gun violence.
“He would have been 44 years old this year. What would he have become?” Howard told CP24.com during an interview earlier this week.
“I wonder if he would have had a wife, a family, kids, a home. … (The loss of my son) is a pain in my heart that will never move.”
Howard said unexpectedly losing her child to gun violence felt like being dropped from a ladder she’d worked so hard to climb. Up until Kempton’s death, life had been going well, she shared. A single mom of two boys, she had a decent job and was exploring options for the future, including the possibility of buying a house. All of those hopes and dreams came to an abrupt end that fateful day.
“Since I lost Kempton, I look at life so, so differently,” Howard said.
“You could be here today and gone tomorrow.”
In the two decades since Kempton’s death, Howard said that she has had good and bad days, but has managed to cope by channelling her grief into advocacy and by giving back to the community.
Over the years, she’s tirelessly devoted her time and energy to combatting gun violence, while also working to uplift and support families who have lost children to murder.
Howard’s advocacy work has resulted in several petitions and speaking engagements.
“I will never stop until the Lord says ‘Joan, I’ve had enough.’ As long as I can walk on my two feet and I can still speak I’ll be out there,” she vowed.
“I’m using my voice to speak for all mothers who lost their child to gun violence.”
Last weekend, Howard held a 20th anniversary memorial for her son at a local park that was renamed in his honour on Mother’s Day in 2007.
“It was not a time for sorrow, but instead it was a time of remembrance, to remember the good person he was, the kind person he was,” she said.
“I always tell people that (Kempton is) gone, but not forgotten.”
On Dec. 13, the day of Kempton’s death, Howard brought together children and staff members from Eastview as she released six doves into the sky in her son’s memory. She’d previously done this on the fifth and tenth anniversaries of his death.
Laurette Jack, a long-time staff member at the local community centre, said Kempton’s murder profoundly affected the close-knit Blake-Boultbee neighbourhood.
“To witness such a traumatic event, everyone saw that a life can be taken at any moment. … A lot of youth were greatly impacted. They understood the need to be leaders in the community and parents understood the importance of being more engaged and involved in their kids’ life,” said Jack, who was pregnant with her now 19-year-old daughter at the time of the tragedy.
“A lot of youth who were there at that time really re-evaluated their life. (Kempton’s death) was a turning point for our neighbourhood.”
Jack said the pain and sadness of Kempton’s untimely death continues to weigh on those in the community, especially since he was truly a “good kid.”
“(Kempton) was always involved and always engaged,” she said, admitting that she still carries feelings of guilt as he worked at Eastview at the time of his death.
“It’s part of the reason I’ve never left the centre. I feel a level of responsibility to the community.”
Howard said that the evening before her son was killed he had reportedly told two males who were smoking weed in a nearby parking lot to leave.
The next day, those two young men came to the building where he lived and a fight broke out in the hallway outside Kempton’s unit during which he was shot in the head. Kempton died at the scene.
In January 2008, two men received prison sentences in connection with the slaying.
Aslyn Walker pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance at parole for 14 years, while Craig Scotland pled guilty to manslaughter and received an almost 13-year prison sentence.
