May 6-12, 2004

cover story

Vernell's Hell

Survival skills: Shortly after her son's death, Vernell Sebrell posted signs on her Beechwood Street porch, criticizing those who refused to investigate the case to her liking. The posters have survived rain, snow and the vandals who've tried to rip them down. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

How shoddy police work in a shooting case has one grieving mother groping for answers.

by Deborah Bolling

Seated at the dining room table in her cluttered North Philadelphia home, Vernell Sebrell is surrounded by copies of every document related to her son's death that she's been able to lay her hands on. Methodically, she reviews each item. She scribbles notes in margins, writes in the spaces between the lines and flags suspicious passages with underlines, exclamation points and question marks.

Although the police and the medical examiner have ruled her son's death an accidental shooting, there are still too many unanswered questions for Sebrell to be sure.

She's concerned about a hasty investigation by the Northwest Detective Division that took only a day to complete and a lack of intervention from every law enforcement agency she has appealed to.

Police admit they rushed through the probe, but say the circumstances seemed obvious.

In the days and months that have followed, Sebrell has posted protest signs on her front porch; placed public notices in newspapers accusing the district attorney of blatant disregard; put a lien on her son's will; and filed a negligence lawsuit against the city. To this day, Sebrell isn't at all convinced that her firstborn was the fatal victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

On July 3, 2003, at approximately 9:45 a.m., police were called to the scene of a shooting at 4931 Portico St., near Germantown and Logan. Minutes earlier, a woman had placed a 911 call alerting police that she thought that the man she lived with had shot himself. According to police reports, when the officers arrived, they discovered Albert Sebrell on his basement floor bleeding, unconscious and gasping for breath. Surveying the scene, police deduced that he had shot himself while talking on a cordless telephone as he put an armful of loaded guns into a furnace. An ambulance was called; a half-hour later, he arrived at Temple University Hospital. According to the coroner's report, seven hours later he was dead. In that time, a few secondhand witnesses were rounded up and questioned. A preliminary police investigation report was drafted and filed:

"Albert Sebrell, 35 is found in the basement suffering from a single gunshot wound of the chest. It appears he was in the process of hiding 5 guns in his furnace when one went off. One large .357 Magnum pistol was pointing out of the furnace with the barrel at an up angle that if it had fired it would have hit anyone standing or squatting or bending over in front of the furnace."

The report goes on to state that in addition to the five loaded guns, all unlicensed, four live ammunition clips were also found inside the small, metal heater. It indicates that police retrieved one spent bullet casing from a .357 Magnum, but does not specify how the gun, a Mitchell Arms single-action U.S. Army model, had actually discharged. No fingerprints were taken from the gun or the scene, and no further investigation was pursued. Police left with the conclusion that Albert Sebrell was the victim of an accidental shooting due to his own negligence.

For Sebrell, the findings seemed vague and the conclusions arrived at too hastily. Her son was a tow-truck driver, a man very familiar with guns, having frequently carried one for protection. The idea that her child could be so careless seemed far-fetched. For the police to write it off so quickly was heartbreaking.

"It didn't make any sense to me," she says. "This was a revolver. If you don't put your finger in the trigger and pull the trigger, it won't go off."

A round of calls to local gun dealers determined that the Mitchell Arms single-action gun has been out of production for years. As a result, most were unfamiliar with the model. However, a knowledgeable dealer in Tennessee wonders how it could have discharged itself.

"The gun in question usually has a safety device," says Jamey Andrews of Dixie Gun Works. "I'd say that without cocking the trigger it could not have gone off."

Sebrell decided to push the police for more answers.

She says she asked the Northwest detective assigned to the case, Det. Stan Schofield, about it, "and he didn't want to discuss it." She adds, "He said if I wanted to complain to his superior, that was OK."

So Sebrell made another phone call.

"I told [the district captain] to read the report and see if it made any sense to him," Sebrell says. "He told me that if I didn't like the way that Detective Schofield had filed the report that I should call a lawyer and file a lawsuit. I said, "I already have.' He said, "So ' and hung up."

Schofield has been a police officer for 33 years. When he arrived at Portico Street at 9:45 a.m. the day of the shooting, he surveyed the scene, asked some questions, analyzed the most obvious clues -- the presence of a body and a discharged gun -- and left. A few days later, he went on vacation. Three weeks later, he filed his formal investigation report, though it was dated the day after the incident. For Schofield, this was an open-and-shut case of accidental death -- until Vernell Sebrell raised a ruckus.

"I wouldn't say this case is still ongoing," he says. "But the mother has made so many complaints, so we're responding to her. I don't know exactly what happened, but it was just the circumstances. He was carrying a handful of guns. According to the girlfriend, he had taken them from the bedroom closet. He was talking on the cordless phone, going downstairs, opening the furnace. We found the guns inside. I don't know how the gun went off. With most revolvers, once they get cocked they go off easy. It doesn't have to be pulled. I would think that that kind of gun is safer, though, so I can't say exactly how it went off."

Nine hours after Albert Sebrell was shot in his basement, his 375-pound corpse and a preliminary police investigation report were delivered to the Medical Examiner's Office. The autopsy report, filed the next day, backed up the police findings.

"According to available information, the subject accidentally shot himself in the chest with his own weapon," the autopsy states. "Despite emergency surgery, the subject could not be revived. Police investigation revealed that the subject had apparently kept several guns in his residence. One of his weapons accidentally discharged, striking the decedent."

The autopsy report explains that when the bullet left the gun chamber, it first grazed the tip of Albert Sebrell's left little finger. Then the projectile entered his chest 5 inches to the left of his sternum and 14 inches below the top of his head. It traveled at an upward angle, from front to back, then from right to left. The bullet penetrated his heart, then his lung, finally lodging itself in his neck. It did not exit his body, and there were no traces of gunpowder around the wound. Hemorrhaging profusely, Albert Sebrell lost more than 10 pints of blood and died without saying a word.

The autopsy, which states that Sebrell died of a gunshot wound to the chest, is unclear about whether the bullet lodged in Albert Sebrell’s neck was ever extracted. Ballistics tests to determine its caliber and confirm which of the five guns it was fired from were never conducted. An analysis of the weapon to confirm that an accidental shooting was even possible was never performed.

Officials at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office say they cannot discuss the case unless the autopsy is subpoenaed for trial.

Sebrell says the hospital then called the homicide unit. She adds that "a complaint was written up, and it was supposed to be passed on to another homicide detective, but he claims he never got it. They claim the paperwork got lost. That’s when I started to boil."

Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, a forensic scientist who frequently appears on CNN and other cable networks to comment on high-profile cases involving weapons, says the lack of evidence collection and evaluation belies standard police procedure. When one dies of something other than natural causes, he says, and particularly when a gun is involved, law enforcement officials have a responsibility to investigate the death.

"Of course, people do stupid things, like keeping guns loaded," Kobilinsky says. "But guns don’t go off by themselves. When somebody dies of a gunshot wound, you have to look at all the possibilities. You have to look at more than just the body. You have to be able to rule out certain things. To me, it seems like there have been a lot of omissions in this case -- and a lot of sloppiness."

For Kobilinsky, an expert with 20 years of experience, the laxity of the investigation is disturbing.

"I think that it is certainly possible that it was an accident and that nothing nefarious occurred," he says. "However, when law enforcement gets involved before the medical examiner declares one way or the other what the actual cause of death is, that’s a problem. There were no ballistics, no fingerprints, no analysis of the weapon. The M.E. should’ve held off coming to any conclusion until they had all the information. If it were determined that this is a weapon that couldn’t possibly fire or misfire, how could you call it an accident? The mother absolutely has a right to be upset. She doesn’t have her answers -- and she probably never will."

Sgt. Andrew Byard, of the Philadelphia Police Department homicide division, says that his office received notification of the incident shortly after it occurred, but they did no investigation. He says the case was handled by Schofield. He also points out that because the person handling the gun was also the one who died, the medical examiner had ruled it a suicide -- even if the death was unintended.

"Technically it was a suicide," he says. "But not specifically."

In 2003, according to the Police Department’s Office of Research and Statistics, at least 334 people died as a result of gunshot wounds. The city logged 273 homicides and 61 suicides. However, the department does not keep statistical information on deaths resulting from accidental gunshots.

"They’re very rare," says Officer Vince Liebel. "The M.E. doesn’t keep records. Homicide doesn’t keep records. And neither do we. Nobody has anything on that, at all. It’s just not a category that anyone keeps."

Albert Sebrell was born in Suffolk, Va., on Jan. 3, 1968. Vernell Sebrell was only 15. She speaks lovingly of her dead son, but admits that during his teens their relationship was on "shaky ground." Like most mothers, she says that Albert was a good kid, but after they moved to Philadelphia, he joined up with a group of neighborhood hooligans. Before long, he was involved in petty crimes, and had racked up a juvenile arrest record. Sebrell decided it was time to get her impressionable son out of the city. When he was 15, she enrolled him in VisionQuest, a national organization that provides intervention services to at-risk youth.

"They sleep out under the stars, summer and winter," she says. "It’s not easy and it’s not fun, but they learn a lot. They learn how to survive tough times. But they’re not there because somebody called for them; they’re there because they broke the law."

About three years later, after traveling across the country, often in a wagon train, Albert returned home, now nearly 18 years old. He had grown distant from his mother and continued to spend most of his time away from her. For the next 17 years, Vernell saw her son infrequently -- if at all.

On the morning of Albert Sebrell’s funeral, before the services at Masjid Muhammad, a Germantown mosque, Vernell reached out to the Victim/Witness Services Unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. She says that she was frustrated that police had not looked any further into the cause of her son’s death. In fact, the lead investigator, Schofield, had already gone on vacation. When nearly a week went by without a return phone call from the District Attorney’s Office, Sebrell read the lack of response as indifference.

"I felt like I was getting the brush, right from the start," she says. "So then I decided to call [District Attorney] Lynne Abraham’s office directly and see if I could speak to the DA or her assistant and put my plight to her. I wanted people to get busy before all the evidence disappeared."

Cathie Abookire, spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office, says that the Victim/Witness Services Unit eventually did return Vernell’s phone call.

"Leland Kent [the advocate] was very happy to help her," Abookire says. "He conferred with our homicide division. They spoke to the M.E. and they reviewed all the records. We found absolutely nothing to contradict the findings of the medical examiner. This was done as a courtesy, because we understood that this was a mother who had lost her son. We were happy to do this for Mrs. Sebrell."

Abookire says that in most circumstances, the District Attorney’s Office will not move ahead without a nod from the appropriate law enforcement agencies -- nor will they look into a case that the police have not initiated.

"We don’t investigate crimes," Abookire says. "The police investigate them and then, generally, we prosecute. We don’t get a case until there is a case."

Abookire says that for her office to get involved, the first step is a police report indicating foul play; the second step is the medical examiner’s report determining the cause of death.

"When the medical examiner rules cause, that’s very significant," Abookire says.

Since last summer, Sebrell has spent every day trying to unravel the circumstances of her son’s unexpected death. The day after he died, through a probate attorney, she filed a caveat in the Register of Wills to thwart any distribution of his estate, which includes only his personal possessions: his computers, furniture, papers and books.

At the end of July 2003, after getting no cooperation from the police, she filed a complaint in U.S. District Court charging the police, the Medical Examiner’s Office and the city’s paramedics with extreme negligence. When told the court’s filing fee was $150, she requested a standard waiver, usually afforded to plaintiffs who can demonstrate need. Though once a nurse for more than 30 years, Vernell is now unemployed and in poor health. She relies solely on a Supplemental Security disability income of less than $580 a month, with an additional $50 in food stamps. Her house is worth $18,500. Affording the fee was difficult for her, so she applied for the waiver. Twice she was denied. Undaunted, she refiled a third time.

That September, after calling every major life insurance company in the country, Sebrell says she discovered a policy her son had purchased from Allstate. The beneficiaries are his two children from his first marriage.

In December, she demanded an Internal Affairs (I.A.) investigation to determine why the lead detective did not dig deeper for answers. She gave her first interview to an I.A. official last month. So far, no findings have been announced.

On March 1, 2004, the U.S. Appeals Court reversed the decision of the District Court judge, granting the waiver and pushing her lawsuit one step closer into the courtroom. When she learned that the assigned judge was the one who denied her waiver requests, she filed a complaint demanding that he recuse himself based on past prejudices. She won that battle mid-April, when another judge was given the case.

On April 20, she learned that the U.S. District Court had issued summonses formally starting her court case. U.S. Marshals have since delivered official notification to the police, the medical examiner and city paramedics.

At every step, Sebrell has encountered tremendous resistance. But throughout it all, she has maintained a steely focus.

Latasha Arrington, Albert Sebrell’s 22-year-old girlfriend at the time of his death, says the two were married in a Muslim ceremony in 2001. There is, however, no marriage license on file at City Hall. The imam from the mosque where the funeral services were held says they did not marry there, though they attended regularly; and Sebrell’s probate attorney, Murray Dolfman, says that his law clerk did a thorough search for a marriage license, but found nothing.

Arrington is weary of Sebrell’s insistence that she was responsible for her son’s death. Though Arrington is emphatic in her denial, Sebrell’s suspicions remain high. According to police reports, Arrington was the lone adult in the house with Albert Sebrell that warm summer morning; Arrington says that her 3-year-old son was also in the house, playing in his room. Sebrell cannot understand why police did not question the toddler, or, at least, fingerprint Arrington. She says Arrington was absolved too quickly.

"She was there and she says she heard it, but she knew nothing about how it happened," Sebrell says. "I find that hard to believe."

Arrington says that after the shooting, Schofield interviewed her for half an hour. She was never considered a suspect; the District Attorney’s Office has concurred that there is absolutely no evidence to the contrary. Arrington says she is deeply troubled that Sebrell still believes otherwise.

"I would’ve never imagined that this woman would ever say I wanted to kill my husband," she says. "Never. But she did."

When the gun went off, it appears that Albert was talking on the telephone with his longtime friend Mike Williams. Williams told police that the two had been finalizing plans for their annual Fourth of July weekend jaunt to Wildwood. He recalls that it was around 9:30 a.m. and that the two had planned to depart within the next half-hour. He says that Albert made no mention of the fact that, as the police have surmised, he was handling guns while they were on the phone. But then again, Williams says he was doing all the talking.

"I was talking about my issues; Albert was just listening," Williams recalls. "But I’ve heard plenty of gunshots, and it didn’t sound like no gun to me. I heard, "cling-a-ling-cling-cling.’ It sounded like pots and pans were falling, like he had opened a door and they all fell out on the floor. When I didn’t hear anything else, I just thought he was picking the stuff up. Then I heard someone say, "Albert, what you done did now?’ and Latasha grabbed the phone and said, "Mike Ö Mike, I think he shot himself.’"

DEADLY PATH: The autopsy explains that when the bullet left the gun, it grazed the tip of Albert Sebrell's left little finger, entered his chest 5 inches to the left of his sternum and 14 inches below the top of his head. It traveled at an upward angle, from front to back, then from right to left. The bullet penetrated his heart, then his lung, finally lodging itself in his neck. Illustration By: Hyacinth Hughes

Williams says he was surprised that Sebrell had shot himself. He always believed him to be extremely knowledgeable about guns.

"I knew he knew guns inside out," he says. "He could take them apart and put them back together in a matter of seconds. It didn’t seem to make much sense that he’d shoot himself, and I couldn’t see her killing him. But, hey, anything’s possible."

Less than 30 days prior to Albert Sebrell’s death, a will was drafted naming Latasha Arrington as primary beneficiary. According to his wishes, Arrington would be bequeathed the contents of the house, which included his personal belongings. Although the document was notarized, signatures of the two witnesses are illegible. In Vernell Sebrell’s estimation, her son’s signature appears different from that on his driver’s license or other documents signed by him. She says she’s certain that it’s a forgery and has filed a motion in the Register of Wills contesting its validity.

"Vernell can’t afford the services of a handwriting analyst, but we’ll go to court based on her testimony," says Murray Dolfman, her probate lawyer. "She’s a very determined woman. I say, always trust the mother’s instinct. She’s into this thing like a pit bull."

Dolfman says that he speaks with Sebrell on a daily basis. They plan to go to court next week. There is no reference to an insurance policy in Albert Sebrell’s will, and Dolfman was not aware that Vernell Sebrell hadn’t seen her son in years. Nevertheless, he points to the case of Delimar Vera, the little girl discovered by her mother at a birthday party seven years after she was thought to have died in a fire.

"That was based on a mother’s instinct," he says. "She knew that was her little girl."

Sebrell points out that Dolfman, who’s been doing this for 43 years, is performing work for her well below his standard rate. Dolfman says jokingly that he expects Sebrell will be unable to pay for his services, at all.

Albert Sebrell lived at 4931 Portico St. for seven years. For three of those, he lived next door to Renee Taylor, whose brother was killed years before. Taylor says Sebrell became a surrogate brother to her, always there when either she or her children needed him. Taylor, unlike the other earwitnesses, says she heard the distinctive sound of a gunshot at approximately 8:40 a.m. -- a full hour earlier than the 911 call was placed. Both Schofield and Arrington have refuted the accuracy of her recollection, though she says she is certain.

"It was so loud that even my cat jumped," Taylor recalls.

Approximately 20 minutes later, after she finished dressing, she went to her front door. Outside she saw Latasha Arrington, a devout Muslim, clad only in her bra and panties. Arrington told Taylor that Albert Sebrell had shot himself and was lying on the basement floor.

"I saw his feet and some blood in his hand," Taylor says. "There was a gun on the floor next to him and I could smell the gunpowder. I didn’t stay in the basement very long. It looked to me like Al was taking his last breath. Ö But the way he was laying on the floor, with his back to the furnace, I wondered how he could shoot himself in the chest and then end up laying the other way? That seems strange to me. Anyway, it’s difficult to perceive that he could shoot himself. He’s always very, very careful with guns. He even explained gun safety to my teenage daughter."

Like Vernell Sebrell, Taylor is having problems accepting the police’s version of events. Taylor says the investigation report erroneously states that she told officers that Arrington had lived in the house with Albert for about a year.

"That’s not what I said," Taylor says. "She wasn’t there a year; maybe more like four months -- after they had been in an on- and off-again relationship for about six months. Albert was married to a friend of mine and [Arrington] didn’t move in until after they got divorced, and that was in January."

Taylor says that she believes that Sebrell was financially solvent. Besides owning his towing business, Sebrell did odd jobs to raise extra money. Like his mother, Taylor doubts the authenticity of Sebrell’s will, saying she’s certain he did not write it. Sebrell had told her that he and Arrington were quarreling about what he was leaving for his sons.

"They had little disagreements here and there, mostly around his children," she says. "They were having a disagreement about his estate. I know that the day before he died, Al went down to do his will over. He had signed [Arrington] up on an earlier one, but he went to change it."

Shots fired: Last summer, this quiet Germantown block was the scene of what police ruled an accidental shooting. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Taylor has a few other suspicions.

"I understand they were supposed to be going away. Al was a pinpoint person, yet nothing was in place for the trip," she says. "And Latasha didn’t seem as upset as I thought she would be. I was more hysterical than she was. Then she asked to use my house phone so she could call 911. I thought it was funny that she would need to call the cops from my house. There’s a phone in Al’s house, right by the door."

Since Albert Sebrell’s death, Latasha Arrington and her young son from another relationship have moved from Portico Street, to her mother’s house in West Philly. A homemaker when Albert was alive, she has recently taken a job working with mentally challenged women. The first time Arrington ever spoke with Vernell Sebrell was the morning she called to inform her that her son had shot himself. She says she "thought it was the right thing to do."

"She needed to know, so I called her," Arrington says. "I questioned whether or not I should tell her because I knew they didn’t have a good relationship. But I did the right thing. My conscience is clear."

On the morning of the incident, Arrington says she was upstairs doing her hair. She heard a shot and ran to the basement. She says she’s satisfied with the police ruling of "accidental death," and although she doesn’t understand how Sebrell could’ve shot himself, she doesn’t contest the autopsy report.

"I don’t know what actually happened," she says. "I don’t know what he was doing down there. I just wish he could’ve made it, so I could’ve asked him."

Arrington says that she and Sebrell never disagreed on what his children would receive in the event of his death. She also says that, to her knowledge, he did not make any changes to his will the day before he died. But dredging up memories of Sebrell and the incident makes her very uncomfortable. Instead, she defers to Lindette Hendricks, another woman who, like Renee Taylor, says Sebrell was like a brother to her. Hendricks says that she met Sebrell when he was 12 years old; she describes him as a runaway in need of a new family.

"Vernell Sebrell hasn’t seen Albert in over 20 years," Hendricks says. "Nobody even knew her. The only way she would’ve known her son had passed away is because this woman called her. Now, she’s acting like there’s a major conspiracy going on. She’s even trying to contest his will. This is never-ending. It’s been almost a year and she can’t put this thing to rest. Every five minutes, she does something else. We just want him to rest in peace."

Hendricks says it was she who paid for Sebrell’s funeral.

"Vernell Sebrell has two grandchildren, 11 and 9. She met them for the first time at her son’s funeral," Hendricks says. "I buried my brother. She had no interest in coming up with the money."

Arrington and Hendricks say that shortly after Sebrell’s death, Vernell Sebrell began insisting that there was foul play, even openly accusing Arrington of murder. They describe her behavior as obsessive and unrelenting. Both say the mother’s fervor is the guilt she feels for not being closer to her son when he was alive.

"She’s cuckoo but she’s not crazy," Hendricks says. "She has some sense, but for us this is not even an issue. Ö If I thought for a split millisecond that Latasha had anything to do with Al’s death, I’d be doing the same thing. But this has been a nightmare, to say the least."

Hendricks recalls that Sebrell "was all right in the beginning. She thanked us at the funeral. But once the insurance policy came up, then it was, "You murdered my son.’ At first, we didn’t even know about the policy; I buried him with my own cash money. But she found it, digging around. It names the kids. There’s no money there for Vernell. And that’s what she’s upset about. The policy left the estate to his kids. Whoever controls the estate, controls the money -- and I am the executrix of his will."

Det. Schofield has gotten reinvolved in the case. Fumbling a bit for words, he admits that when he left for vacation some things fell through the cracks. He says that finally, nine months later, the bullet has been located, and he expects a ballistics report to be forthcoming.

"Last week, the M.E. called me asking if I had the projectile," he says. "When there are suicides or accidental deaths, I never deal with getting the projectile from the body. The M.E. usually sends it to the firearms people. Apparently, this bullet had somehow disappeared. It’s embarrassing for everybody concerned."

Schofield admits that nobody has ever known what type of bullet killed Sebrell. All they have to go on is the spent .357 Magnum bullet casing found near his body. He says he interviewed Arrington for a half-hour and was satisfied with her statement. He doesn’t believe that she shot her boyfriend. Looking back, though, he says perhaps he could’ve done more.

"Maybe I should’ve given her a lie detector test or taken her fingerprints," he says. "But I didn’t see any doubt."

He points out that since Sebrell was talking on the phone at the time of the incident, he believes that Williams, on the other end, would’ve gotten a clear indication if Arrington were the trigger person.

"We have both of their stories," he says. "He says he heard a metallic sound, which we believe was the sound of the guns hitting the furnace as they were being dropped. She says she was upstairs and she heard the gun go off. Their stories corroborate. If something else happened, those two would’ve had to be in it together.

"There is one problem, though," he says. "Mike Williams doesn’t hear a gunshot, he hears a metallic sound. That is a problem. But because of the electronics of the phone, we believe it might not have transmitted the sound of a gunshot."

Overall, Schofield says nothing seemed very mysterious to him: Albert Sebrell was simply careless that day.

"It was July and the furnace wasn’t fired up, but all the guns were loaded and that doesn’t seem too bright," he says. "You can call the incident a dumb accident because of the way he was handling his guns. I guess he was trying to think like a burglar. Since he was going away, maybe he was worried about his home being broken into, so he was putting them someplace where no one would think to look.

"I don’t want to be too critical of the mother," he says, "but did you know that she hadn’t seen her son for many years? I kinda think that she just might feel guilty that she wasn’t more involved."

A former high-ranking Philadelphia police officer says he won’t comment on a case he’s unfamiliar with, but he does say that a cop’s level of interest relies heavily on his own assessment of the scene. He has one question, though: Since there was a dead body and a discharged gun, why wasn’t someone from the homicide division ever assigned to the case?

Vernell Sebrell is in the fight of her life. As soon as she’s given a date, she’ll go into federal court with reams of paperwork in her hands, but no attorney by her side. Unable to afford a lawyer, Sebrell will present this case on her own. Tall and imposing, her memory for details is surprisingly keen. Referring to the "log" in her head, she spins off dates, times, addresses and the names of people she’s never seen with total acuity. She says talking about the ordeal makes her feel better, though sometimes she wells up with tears and her large body shudders. One day, she intends to find justice.

"I really expected great things from the Philadelphia Police Department," she says. "But too many officers have been involved in covering things up. And if they think I’m going somewhere, they’re wrong. That’s my son. I still love him. If I could change places with him in that coffin, I would. But I can’t. So I’ll be sitting right here. In my position, you just do the best you can -- and you pray."