Crime Scenes can be brutal on grieving mothers

Crime Scene Investigation

Watching crime shows on television, I learned that you don't touch anything at a crime scene. On TV, everything is wrapped up in an hour. In real life, however, when people are involved, everything does not go smoothly and can be quite traumatizing.

Grieving mothers at crime scenes. It's a scenario you don't want to experience or watch. On a recent episode of Dateline, an FBI agent was tasked with taking his mother and father to where the dead body of their son, his brother, had been found.

The agent told Keith Morrison that his mother said she wanted to put a blanket over her son because he looked cold. In what he called his "FBI mode", he told his mother, "You can't do that, honey, it's a crime scene". 

I understood his words, but I felt bad for a grieving mother unable to put a blanket over her son. I had watched this scenario play out in 2009, but this story begins five years earlier.

Unnecessary Violence

My husband and I moved our family in with my grandmother in 2003 after my mother died, so she could keep her home. The following April, while we were at the local Civic Center watching Evangelist Paula White preach, tragedy struck.

We returned home to the news that Ben, one of my oldest son's friends, had been shot and killed a little over a block away from our house in the back of a school that had been turned into a retirement center with an African American history museum in the basement. 

In 2008, I began taking afternoon walks to a store a few blocks from where the shooting occurred. Each time I thought of Ben, I prayed as I walked for the young people in the area. 

One afternoon, on my way home, as I neared the spot where Ben had died, I began praying, "Lord, please protect the young men, and don't let it happen again." I heard in my spirit, "It will happen again."

It's going to happen again

I began praying more fervently on my walks, and a second time, as I neared the spot in back of the former school, I heard the Holy Spirit say "It's going to happen again". About a month later, it did. Another young man was shot and killed in the same spot.

This time it was a friend of my youngest son named Gregory. From the sidewalk in front of my home, I saw police cars and people gathered. I walked down the street and saw the fifteen-year-old lying anear teh curb, against the sidewalk.

Nearby, his mother was crying. She walked close to her son several times but was told to move back. I asked a police officer why she could not see her dead child and why no sheet was placed over the body. He responded that it was a crime scene. 

Don't contaminate the crime scene

I understand that evidence cannot be tampered with, and a crime scene should not be contaminated. Still, this is brutal on a mother whose child has lost his life.

I stood for about ten minutes watching this woman sobbing profusely as her child lay crumpled on the ground. I asked someone why the body had not been moved, or at least a sheet placed over him. They said they were waiting on the coroner.

This was about 8:30 pm. I walked home, and around 10:00, I returned to the scene, where Gregory was still lying on the ground. His distraught mother was still pacing and crying. Her uncle was holding her and trying to console her.

Why does it take teh coroner so long?

I was told the coroner lived in a neighboring county about 30 minutes away. I wondered why, in more than two hours, he had not arrived. I thought it cruel for Gregory's mother to be put through this agony, but it was the law. I wondered if this had been a more affluent neighborhood, would the coroner have arrived earlier?

I went home and could not sleep, thinking about Gregory's mom. Curious, I walked back to the crime scene after midnight, and things were still the same. I was told the next morning that the coroner did not arrive until after 1:00 a.m.

Unable to comfort a child

A grieving mother whose child has been murdered should not have to see him lying on the ground for five hours as if he were trash waiting for the sanitation workers. The laws of the land dictate otherwise.

I've never forgotten the sight of Gregory and his sobbing mother as neighbors stood around. The Dateline episode brought it all back. To the authorities, it's a crime scene, but a mother only sees and wants to comfort her child one last time.