From Philadelphia to the Philippines, moms connect over losing kids to gun violence

Kimberly Kamara had already pulled herself away from the relentless parade of meetings, hearings, news conferences, and protests about gun violence that have become as much a regular occurrence in Philadelphia as the sound of shots ringing out in our streets.

As best she could, Kamara, 53, also stayed away from local news and its running ticker tape of trauma: Four shot. Two dead. At least 29 shots fired.

It was all too painful.

Call it self-care or a survival instinct — Kamara told me recently that she just couldn’t bear hearing about yet another shooting, yet another death that would inevitably be followed by the kind of pain she’s known all-too-well since her youngest child, 23-year-old Niam Kairi Johnson-Tate, was gunned down on July 4, 2017.

She needed a break, a breath.

But then her husband, Kesselle, mentioned the shooting death of John Albert Laylo on June 19. Laylo, a 35-year-old lawyer from the Philippines, was vacationing in Philadelphia with his mother when he was shot and killed as they were heading to the airport. Someone in a nearby car fired several rounds into their Uber at a red light near the University of Pennsylvania.

His mother, Leah Bustamante Laylo, suffered minor shrapnel wounds. She took to Facebook while still in the hospital to express her despair.

“We travelled together and we are supposed to go home together!” she wrote. “I will bring him home soon in a box!”

Kamara wasn’t sure why this shooting — out of countless others — moved her so. Maybe it was the close relationship between mother and son, much like Kamara’s own with Niam. Maybe it was because John Albert Laylo, like Kamara’s only son, was an organ donor. Two senseless deaths that had the potential to spare other lives.

It wasn’t lost on Kamara that the killing of a tourist near an Ivy League campus was getting more attention than many shootings that occur with deadly frequency in neighborhoods around Philadelphia; Laylo was one of nine people who were fatally shot over the same horrific weekend. There was time to talk about that later. For now, this was just one mother focused on another mother’s pain.

For a while, Laylo’s death was all Kamara could think of. What must the trip back home be like for this mother, she wondered? What must the shooting, which police believe was a case of mistaken identity, say about the sad state of our city — not just to this mother, but to those outside of Philadelphia?

After the shooting, Filipino diplomats met with Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney and police officials. They said Kenney apologized and assured them that everything was being done to solve the case. But so far, Laylo’s death remains unsolved, much like the killing of Kamara’s son all these years later.

With another country’s eyes focused on Philadelphia, someone else might have been tempted to say that whatever drove Laylo’s killers didn’t represent the true heart of the city. But Kamara wasn’t about to say that, not in a city with more than 1,100 shootings and 254 homicides as of Wednesday.

And yet, Kamara wanted to say something to another mother joining the ranks of the grieving.

“I felt like I needed to.”

With no other way to reach Laylo’s mother, Kamara sent Leah Bustamante Laylo a message on Facebook.

She didn’t know if she’d ever see it; she never expected a response from a mother now tasked with getting her son’s body back home. But she hoped that knowing she wasn’t alone might bring her some comfort.

“I will not tell you everything is going to be alright, I will not tell you that you will get over this … to be strong,” Kamara wrote.

“It’s alright to cry, scream and holler. It’s alright to question and wonder why … I am here, if you need to talk or if you need me to listen.”

Kamara later received a gracious and simple expression of gratitude from Bustamante. But whether she responded to Kamara or not, Bustamante and her son had already become a catalyst that allowed one mother to begin sharing her strength with other mothers again.

The sense of obligation that compels some grieving mothers to connect with one another is the kind of duty no parent should ever have to endure. Yet, again and again, so many of these mothers persist — sometimes pausing briefly for a break, a breath — locking arms despite and because of their shared pain.

There is a reason why I dedicate so much space to telling the stories of mothers who’ve lost children to gun violence, why I amplify their often unheeded calls for justice.

Individually, these women and their stories are powerful.

Collectively, I’ve always believed, they can be a force for change.

I’ve seen it when mothers protested outside Police Headquarters for three consecutive nights in 2019 to call attention to unsolved murders, and police finally took notice of some of their loved ones’ cases that had been languishing for years.

And I’m hoping public officials will take more notice, and action, with the recent formation of the Mother’s Movement, an antiviolence group made up of women who have buried far too many children and loved ones.

I wondered if Kamara would skip the group’s recent gathering at City Hall. But, when the time came, there she was, standing again in solidarity with other women demanding public officials do more to address the crisis — bolstered, perhaps, by the connection she had recently made with another mother thousands of miles away.

“We are tired, but we are determined,” Kamara said hopefully. “Somebody’s got to hear us.”