I sat on a bench near the entrance inside the McCullough Funeral Home rereading my list of questions as I anxiously awaited the arrival of Tharea Johnson.
Pierre Johnson, her 14-year-old son, was killed in a mass shooting June 1 across the street from their home in Fuller Park.
I reached Johnson by phone days after her son was killed, and she told me she’d be willing to speak to me at Pierre’s balloon release at the funeral home.
When she arrived, I shook her hand and offered my condolences, as I do with every bereaved person I come in contact with while reporting.
Although I was there to interview her, I tried to remain sensitive to the fact she had just lost her son. I waited patiently for her to greet family members before I politely asked if I could have a few minutes of her time.
We went to a corner of the funeral home so I could ask her a few questions about her sons. She insisted Christine Cozzi, a close family friend and someone who was extremely close to Pierre, sit in on the interview, and I was happy to accommodate them.
I first started piecing together Pierre’s story after doing a phone interview with Cozzi. She described him as someone who “found a way to make himself a part of everyone’s family.”
She told me Pierre’s brother was shot on the same block years earlier.
Cozzi was initially reluctant to give out Paris Johnson’s name because she wanted the story to be about Pierre’s life. She didn’t want his story lost to the fact that he was the second son in the family to lose his life on the block where the family lived.
I asked Cozzi again for Paris’ name and assured her I’d try my best to make sure Pierre’s personality shone through in our story. She obliged.
I used a crime data-tracking tool to look up every shooting that occurred on the Fuller Park block dating to 1994.
A search of the Cook County medical examiner’s data portal revealed Pierre’s brother died when he was 21, and we were able to confirm his identity through an old medical examiner’s ledger we keep archived.
Sophie Sherry, my colleague, also found his Facebook account and a picture of him in a wheelchair from 2018.
The picture date and medical examiner’s information allowed me to narrow the shooting down to three possible dates the shooting occurred.
I passed the dates along to my editor, Rosemary Sobol, and she was able to get a police report with Paris listed as the victim and a date that matched one of the three I suspected.
While I never doubted Cozzi was telling the truth about the gun violence that impacted the family, we needed to verify the circumstances of the shooting.
Pierre had already been spending time with Cozzi’s family every summer years before his brother was shot, but another editor, Dan Haar, encouraged me to explore the connection between Paris being shot and Pierre feeling threatened on the block.
I started my interview with Tharea Johnson by asking questions about who Pierre was and what he meant to her.
As I inched closer toward my questions about Paris, my heart started to beat faster. I hoped she wouldn’t take offense to me asking about Paris and how the prior shooting affected Pierre.
I gave her the option to not answer my questions about Paris in case the emotional burden became too heavy, even if it meant having to rework my story.
I cared more about Tharea’s well-being — I never want my sources to feel like I’m using their trauma for my professional benefit.
Tharea answered my questions in great detail. She described how the shooting that wounded Paris — who later died of a cause unrelated to the shooting — motivated Pierre to seek out a different path in life.
She spoke with conviction as she described how losing Pierre only strengthened her resolve to work with families who try, often in vain, to escape gun violence.
She had already been reaching out to victims suffering long-term effects from getting shot to “let them know they were not alone.”
“Today, somebody’s mother is in the same predicament I’m in right now,” Johnson said. “And who’s going to fight for her like me? I feel like I can fight for her because I’m fighting for Pierre.
“This fight isn’t just for one kid, it’s for everybody’s kids.”
As the story neared publication, I reread my draft well over 100 times to go over every minor detail and leave no room for misinformation or inaccuracies.
It becomes easy to misinterpret certain pieces of a story when you ping-pong between sources, editors and your own comprehension of the story you’re writing.
I often double- or triple-check with sources to make sure I have everything right, even after a story publishes.
I wasn’t aiming for the best narrative, I was trying to balance including essential information surrounding the shooting with telling Pierre’s story through those who loved him.
I had two weeks of paid time off I previously scheduled right after I finished Pierre’s story. I still found myself thinking about him while I was away.
I often find myself thinking of those I’ve wrote about over the last 21⁄2 years. I occasionally reach out to some family members I’ve spoken to for stories to check in and see how they’re doing.
As journalists, we stay objective as a responsibility to our readers, but I feel it’s just as important to stay compassionate to those who trust us with their stories when we cover tragedies.
I think back to how broken, hopeless and defeated I was when my best friend, Fabian Ortega, died of cancer in 2020. Or how those feelings returned a year later when my Aunt Sally suffered the same fate.
I relive the fear I felt as I rushed from my laptop during a shift in March to hold my 6-year-old brother Musa’s stiff hand as — for a split-second — I accepted he was dying.
His face continued to turn bluer by the moment while my father continued to try to get him to breathe. I wanted him to feel me and know I was there, to know he wasn’t alone if it was his time to go.
He periodically suffers medical episodes that make it difficult for him to breathe. It’s at least the third time we’ve almost lost him, and we’re still left with questions over the root cause of his condition.
He miraculously survived, but his close call reminded me of how delicate the line between life and death is.
I channel the vulnerability I felt in my lowest moments to try to show compassion to families that have it much worse than I ever did.
I express my condolences to a family for their loss, but I never say I understand what they’re going through. I’ve lost loved ones, but in most cases the families I come in contact with had their loved ones taken from them by someone else.
I was able to find closure with both Fabian and my aunt. My last words to both were that I loved them.
Many of the families I speak to never got to say goodbye in the way that I was fortunate enough to.
Writing their stories will never be a sufficient goodbye, but I hope the families I encounter find some comfort in sharing a glimpse — or more — of the loved one they lost.
