Ryan Harris’ mom: ‘These deaths . . . need to stop’
The balloons that swirled up into the blue sky on Saturday were a familiar sight for Englewood residents. This year marks the 14th time friends and family of 11-year-old murder victim Ryan Harris have met at her namesake park to remember a life cut short.
On July 28, 1998, the lifeless girl was found battered and sexually assaulted in an isolated Englewood backyard a day after she’d been reported missing. The grisly murder made national headlines when two boys — ages 7 and 8 — were charged with the crime, then later cleared.
DNA evidence later linked Floyd Durr, of the South Side, to the crime and he eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
For Sabrina Harris, the girl’s mother, the details are still fresh.
But the anniversary of the event is about more than Ryan’s life, she said. It’s about the grief communities are consumed with from ongoing street violence. With family and friends clad in T-shirts featuring Ryan’s photo, Sabrina Ryan took the microphone to thank the crowd for coming out to remember her daughter. But tears welled: “I’m so overwhelmed with a lot of the shootings that are happening in our community. And all these deaths, they need to stop,” she said.
Children with their faces painted paused to listen to her words. And a minute later, at 2:30 p.m. — the time Ryan’s body was discovered — more than two dozen family members released the balloons and said, “This is for Ryan.”
“You have to take this message back to your block, back to your house. We need to stop all this senseless shooting and violence that is going on,” Darryl Smith, president of the Englewood Political Taskforce, told the crowd. “If you know somebody out there with that nonsense, pull their coattail. Tell them it’s time to stop.”
Smith’s remedy: Start caring about your own home, your own block and your community. And speak up.
“We have to talk to the shooters. We have to see what’s going on in their minds,” Smith said. “. . . If you think they’re capable of it, you talk to them before it happens, and until we do that, nothing will stop.”