Mural honors young victims of gun violence
The hearts are like fresh fingerprints from a friend murdered months ago.
As Janine Surgen's family paints her face in a mural sketched by Christopher Harden, the first heart appeared at the center of a rose then in the clouds above a cold, dark street leading straight to heaven. Covering graffiti on the side of a craft store in Kenmore, the mural is about 50 feet from where Surgen, 20, was fatally shot multiple times on July 3 in broad daylight.
“This stuff really has to stop. I've lost at least 13 friends just this year,” said Harden, 25, who knew Surgen since they were kids. “I don't think I can handle another one. You know what I mean?” said Harden, who is engaged to be married with a first child on the way.
The Kenmore man has admittedly wasted too much of his life in the penitentiary, serving time for aggravated robbery and other charges. He now hopes to open a tattoo shop, which was the last thing Surgen wanted to do before she died.
“I'm trying to change my life,” he said. “I turned my life to God. I'm trying to open my own tattoo business. And I'm trying to do stuff with the Stop the Violence [campaign in Kenmore] with Brenna [Surgen, Janine's mother], be
cause it is a sad situation.”
The mural on the side of Black's Mary, an art supply store at the corner of Kohler Avenue and 27th Street SW, will feature Janine's face and the names of seven other young people from the neighborhood lost to gun violence.
Half these murders remain unsolved. Some are years old.
Brenna Surgen, Janine's mother, got
the idea to memorialize her daughter while shopping at the art supply store her daughter frequented in her younger years. Marilyn Berresford, who owns the shop with her sister Marsha Stewart, told Brenna how she remembered Janine as that sweet young girl always walking her small dog in the neighborhood.
Berresford “didn't hesitate” when asked Friday about allowing the mural to go up.
“I just feel it's an honor that we would be chosen to have that done on our building. It's just a terrible tragedy what's going on in Akron and this Kenmore area,” Berresford said.
Berresford said she was dismayed to hear that Brenna Surgen was asked 45 days after the murder of her daughter to take down a memorial on a nearby telephone.
The mural is something more permanent, something sacred enough to end the graffiti and hopefully move this southwest corner of Akron closer to ending the gun violence that's gripped America this year.
Harden agreed to design and sketch the mural. Janine's mother, her surviving sisters and their kids are contributing brush strokes. The project was expected to be done Tuesday.
“It hit me last night that I'm putting my daughter on a wall as a memorial and she's never coming back,” Brenna Surgen said earlier this week.
The mother has attended every virtual hearing in her daughter's murder case. Three people have been charged in her death: Jaleel Bryant Sojouner, 25; Xaxier Tolbert, 17; and Calvin Thompson, 16, who police believe pulled the trigger.
“I still have a lot of anger and rage and unanswered questions,” said Brenna Surgen. In the months without her daughter, she’s tried to channel her grief into something positive, helping out with the neighborhood Stop the Violence effort and now by publicly displaying the names of lives taken too young.
“I have my good days and my bad days. At bedtime, when all the kids are asleep and it’s quiet, it sneaks up on me and hits me in the head like a 2 by 4,” said Brenna. “I’m trying to, for lack of better words, stay strong.”
The artistic display of loss includes Janine’s face and the names of other lives lost. They are:
Isaiah Chapman, Anna Karam, Cody James Herring, Xavier Mcmullen, Rebecca Tomlinson, Tyler Bryce Anderson and Keijuan M. Harrison.