By Alesia Wright
All
she can remember is the ringing in her ears. It was
Thursday, March 2, 2006, and just another normal day for the 18-year-old Ryann
Brown, a senior at Simeon High School. “It
was a regular day. I was trying to be slick. I drove my sister’s van to school
and then I had brought some friends home so she could let me drop them off so I
could keep the car,” Brown said, reflecting on that day. “She ended up going
with me, we ended up going to my other friend’s house playing cards…we left out
the house and I went and got in the car with my other friend.”
Brown
had always been a hard worker, very determined, and always very independent,
according to her mother, Kimberly Johnson. She had been looking forward to
graduation and prom and all the other perks and aspirations that comes with
being a senior in high school. But for Brown all of this was cut short.
“All
I remember is ringing in my ears,” Brown said, now six years later, sitting
next to her mother on the black leather couch in the living room of her
Roseland home.
While
sitting in the car that night on 77th and Peoria Streets, with a 20-year-old
male friend, an unknown gunman walked up to the car and opened fire fatally
hitting the young man multiple times in the chest, according to Ryan and
published reports. One bullet struck Brown in the head.
In critical
condition, Brown was rushed to Christ Hospital. Brown
says that it has been a struggle and a long road to recovery. “My daughter
has had four surgeries on her head. The bullet remains lodged in her brain,”
Johnson said of her daughter. “She has a titanium plate inserted in her head.”
Being
listed in critical condition for a month or so, Johnson as well as Brown found
it very difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But it was only
the strength of their families that kept their spirits up and kept them moving
forward towards Brown’s recovery.
“And
as long as I was focused on trying to figure out for them to catch who shot Brown
she didn’t do well and I didn’t either. When the focus got switched to let’s
just focus on her getting better, she got better,” Johnson said, “She hasn’t
went backwards since. She’s in school at Daley College…she’s scheduled to
graduate this May.”
Hard
times hit when Johnson lost one of the two jobs she worked so that she could be
with her daughter while she recovered. But there seemed to be a false glimmer
of hope with Crime Victims Compensation.
“It
sounds good, but it’s not good. It hasn’t kept up with the times…it gave me a
false sense of security,” Johnson explains.
Johnson
said the family was not compensated for the financial loss and medical bills
until 18 months after Brown’s shooting. By this time, she had to file
bankruptcy to keep her home.
The
family’s strength was tested yet once again when her youngest son, Ricky Brown,
was shot and killed just at the bottom of their house steps as he was headed
out to work on the morning of March 21, 2012.
Even
after all of the drama and tragedies that surrounded Johnson, she has managed
to keep her head up move forward.
“We
only have like five minutes to be upset, then we got to start getting in to the
solution. So go over there cry for your little five minutes, then come back
over here because we got to fix this stuff,” Johnson remembers telling her
daughter.
Determined, Brown returned to school in 2008, and
expects to graduate in May 2013 with a degree in business administration. She also
plans to open a center of rehabilitation for people who are survivors of gun
violence, just like her.