A mother’s grief compounded by unknowns

This has been a deadly year in Seattle. There were more murders in the city through the first six months of this year than there were in all of 2011.

For most of us, the numbers and stats don’t really make an impact. We take a moment, maybe, and then move on.

But for the families of the 23 people killed in Seattle this year, there is no moving on, especially in the cases where the police have not made any arrests.

Marlo Williams sobs uncontrollably each time she thinks of the promise her son Desmond Jackson’s life held. Would he become a chef? Would he follow his love of photography? Where would his bright smile take him?

Those possibilities ended February 11 outside Club X in SoDo. Jackson, 22, was gunned down by a group of people who spilled out of a car on the street.

A mother’s anguish cannot be extinguished.

“It’s been like pure, deep Hell,” Williams told me. “The pain that I’ve been going through the last seven months, there is no words to explain the pain that me and my family have been going through since Desmond’s death. I don’t wish this on my worst enemy.”

The family has said Jackson wasn’t into drugs or gangs, but it suspects gang members in his murder. A lot of people in the neighborhood think they know who is responsible, but no one has come forward to police with information.

I asked Williams what gets her out of bed in the morning, knowing that people are likely protecting her son’s killer.

“Grace of God,” she said. “I get up every morning, and I pray to Him and I ask him ‘God is today going to be the day I’m going to get that call? For them to tell me they have caught somebody that murdered my son.'”

Jackson’s face will soon be plastered on billboards and bus ads around Seattle. The first went up on Tuesday. It asks “Who Killed Me” and encourages people to come forward.

Tears rolled down Williams’ cheeks as she saw it for the first time.

“What if this was your loved one,” she asked. “How would you feel? What would you want? Would you still want this person walking the streets or would you want this person to be arrested? So I’m just asking that if there’s anybody that has any information that will lead to an arrest for Desmond’s murderer to please come forward.”

Somebody knows something Williams believes, and an arrest would lighten her emotional load, if only by a fraction.