New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Mother shares her grief journey 10 years after her son’s murder
Allison DeRoche always tells people she has two children, one on earth and one in heaven.
She lost her son Radcliff Emanuel DeRoche 10 years ago to gun violence, but still wears his portrait on a T-shirt.
“I could look back now and talk about it — I still always cry — but
the pain is different pain than eight years ago,” she said. “It’s a different pain than two years ago, but the pain is still there because my entire house reminds me of my son.
“I’ll always remember it was a beautiful Easter Sunday,” said Allison DeRoche.
That’s the day her 18-year-old son was shot and killed. He is among the 2,056 gun deaths in the roughly 10-year period between January 2010 and mid-2020, according to medical examiner data obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media.
DeRoche lives in New Haven in the house where her children — Radcliff, who went by “PJ,” and Cherice DeRoche — grew up and where she had her last conversation with her son on April 4, 2010, the day he was murdered.
She was home cooking and worshiping that day while her son was at church and her daughter, who was visiting from college, was out to see a relative. PJ DeRoche’s father dropped him home later in the day around dinner time, where mother and son sat talking and eating.
“I’m telling him ‘PJ I love you and Cherice,’” Allison DeRoche said. “‘If I’m always arguing with you it’s because I love you,’ expressing all my love.”
She remembers her son as someone who cared for everybody, especially her.
“My daughter went away to college and he told me he wasn’t going to because he had to make sure everything was taken care of with me,” she said. “He figured he had to be around to protect me and always that’s how he was.”
DeRoche said her son was outgoing as a kid and active in sports, especially basketball, and loved to ride bikes. He was also a mentor to many younger kids in his neighborhood and would take them under his wing, she said.
“He was very loving, fun, very friendly, social and loved God,” she said.
DeRoche said her son wanted to build things and was looking to get a job in an electrician or carpenter trade. He had an interview at Job Corps the Friday before Easter.
On Sunday, after their meal, PJ DeRoche told his mother he was going out to ride a friend’s bike, because it was a sunny 76 degrees and he didn’t want to stay inside.
“I said ‘you better be careful’ and he said ‘I’m good, I’m good,’” Allison DeRoche recalled.
She worried about him in New Haven because of some of the friends he kept, especially when he visited other neighborhoods around the city, but she knew he also didn’t have any enemies because he was widely popular.
After stopping by his house one more time, Allison DeRoche said he rode off again and she started praying to Jesus to keep him safe.
“Then I heard all these ambulances and fire engines,” she said. “It was crazy that day, then I realized it was going to pick up my child.”
“This guy came running to the door, ‘Miss Allison, PJ got shot. PJ got shot,’ Then my daughter came home, yelling ‘Momma somebody shot him! Ma they shot PJ!’” DeRoche recalled.
A friend who worked at Yale New Haven Hospital said an ambulance had brought her son in so she had someone drive her there.
“I was numb, like I wasn't there,” she said. DeRoche waited in the family room of the hospital with her ex-husband and eventually their pastor, pacing and praying for her son’s life.
DeRoche stayed in the hospital all night with her son, stroking his hand and praying, until after midnight a doctor eventually had to ask her to leave the room and they had to pronounce him dead, because there wasn’t anything else they could do to save him.
“I just started crying,” she said. “A friend brought me home and the house was crowded with people from the neighborhood, friends, boys and girls. They were all just there.”
Even more friends and neighbors gathered for his funeral a week later, with more than 1,000 people inside and outside the church there to pay their respects.
“At that time I had no idea my son was so loved and well known,” DeRoche said. “It felt good, but too bad it was at the end of his life. No one had anything bad to say about him.”
People whom PJ had helped throughout his life came to remember him, including an elderly woman he helped at the grocery store and a boy PJ had helped in school who called PJ his angel.
Police arrested the person who shot PJ, William Wilkins, on May 19, 2010 and he was convicted for murder in 2013, for which he was sentenced to 65 years in prison, according to news reports published at the time.
“To a person who’s so upset they want to take someone’s life, think about what you’re doing because you’re going to be hurting a lot of people, from both families,” she said. “It’s not just their parents, it’s your parents. Your whole life goes away. Think about the consequences and what’s going to take place after all of this.”
According to witness statements to police, Wilkins killed PJ DeRoche because he talked to someone in a known gang with whom Wilkins had a problem. That friend was later killed also, Allison DeRoche said.
“It wasn’t until I lost my child, then I realized the pain of a loss,” she said. “It’s not the same as losing others. This was my child that I birthed. I was not supposed to bury him.”
She went to counseling for years and also joined a group of mothers who had also lost children to gun violence in the city, but said many of those surviving family members haven’t gotten the support and resources that she has had.
“A lot of people are angry because they didn’t have closure of who killed their kid,” she said. “They’re angry and they’re angry with the police. For a lot of people it’s been 20 years so they’re angry with the police.”
Even though much about her son’s murder remains unexplained, DeRoche said she’s not looking for answers from Wilkins because of her faith in God, which has carried her through her pain.
“PJ was the sweetest kid,” DeRoche said. “That guy that killed him never should have done that. I could never have another son like PJ.”