Nicholas Heyward Sr. stands in the stairwell of the Brooklyn housing project where a New York City police officer killed his 13 year old son, Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. All photos by Meron Menghistab
This story appeared in the September issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.
Nicholas Heyward Sr. stood on the rooftop of 423 Baltic Street, steps from where a cop killed his 13-year-old son in 1994—long before America came to know Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, or Philando Castile. He looked out over the panorama of Brooklyn around him—the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan to the northwest, the New York Bay to the south, and miles of Kings County opening out to the east, punctuated by church spires and water towers—before walking me into the stairwell where his son had been shot.
Afternoon light poured in from a glass-block window above the landing to the fourteenth floor of the building, one of several in the Gowanus Houses, a public housing complex in the southern part of the borough. Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. and three of his friends were playing cops and robbers on the evening of September 27, 1994, when they decided to go downstairs and search for the other boys in the game. They lined up single file, toy guns in hand, and prepared to sneak downstairs.
"When Nicholas turned the corner," Heyward recounted, "he saw the officer. The officer yelled out will go away. It's a reflection of the same attitude that you find in police departments and law enforcement today: It's just a black kid."
Hynes's lawyer, Sean Haran, says the former DA "stands behind the good and highly professional work that his office performed in investigating and reviewing the matter."
DA Thompson may be considering criminal charges against George and may also seek to determine whether Hynes or the police department committed any wrongdoing, and Heyward is optimistic that he will; Thompson pursued charges against Peter Liang, the officer who killed Akai Gurley, and he's overturned roughly 20 wrongful convictions from previous DAs' tenures. There's also reason to be skeptical: DA Thompson is the one who recommended the judge not sentence Liang to jail time, resulting in the community service and probation sentence, rendering the case something of a show trial. A spokesperson said the DA's office is unable to comment on the investigation because it is ongoing.
It's been a year since the DA reaffirmed his intention to fulfill his campaign pledge. The long wait for closure—for some sort of reasonable response by some level of government to the killing of his child—has only compounded Heyward's suffering. Now, when the pain comes, it comes in stronger, he said, and he finds himself in tears at unexpected moments. Every time a police officer shoots another black man, he said, "You're reliving the pain of the loss of your loved one over and over again."
Heyward holds the toy rifle that he says Nicholas was playing with on the day he was killed.
As ever, Heyward holds out hope. He invited Thompson back to this year's Day of Remembrance—the annual celebration of Nicholas's birthday—held on a Saturday afternoon in late August at the Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. Park.
This year marked 35 years since his birth and 22 years since his death. As in previous years, there was music and speeches, arts and crafts, basketball games, and a toy-guns-for-books exchange. Thompson did not attend. Still, Heyward told his son's story to all who gathered and said that he hopes, this time, the DA's investigation into his son's death is thorough and transparent.
Toward evening, friends and family members began to say their goodbyes, and the crowd thinned and the plaza quieted. Soon the only sound left was the laughter of the children from the Gowanus Houses playing in the park.
This story appeared in the September issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.
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