NEW YORK — Constance Malcolm still lives in the Bronx apartment where her 18-year-old son, Ramarley Graham, was shot and killed by a New York City Police Department officer three years ago on Monday.
Tucked away in a corner of one room, there’s a pile of Ramarley’s clothes, just as he left them, with T-shirts folded neatly. A stack of his picture frames shows the family in happier times, when Ramarley was alive.
“Everything is still the same way, three years later,” Constance said. “I get the question all the time: ‘What are you going to do with it?’ And I don’t know, because Ramarley was very funny with his stuff, so I have to be very careful about who I give it away to, if I’m giving it away.”
“Maybe his brother will take it,” she added, referring to 9-year-old Chinoor Campbell, who was only 6 when he witnessed an NYPD officer shooting his big brother.
In the living room, there’s the same TV on which Ramarley and Chinoor played video games, and the same couch where Ramarley slept when he wasn’t staying at his dad’s place down in Harlem.
Ramarley Graham. (Photo: Twitter/Ramarley’s Call)
And in the bathroom, on the lowest rung of a metal shelf, Constance still keeps a macabre memento of that winter afternoon three years ago: a white bath mat, splotched with stains of her son’s blood, from when a single bullet fired by NYPD Officer Richard Haste pierced Ramarley’s chest.
“I don’t know why I kept it,” Constance said of the mat, “but I did.”
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#RamarleyGraham’s mom does die in @TheJusticeDept demanding officers b prosecuted for killing her son #ThisStopsToday pic.twitter.com/nCUgscF6h2
— Justice Committee (@watchthecops) January 16, 2015
DOJ declined to comment on the investigation to The Huffington Post, pointing only to its most recent statement about the case, which was made in August.
Constance has to go to work on Monday, the third anniversary of Ramarley’s death. She’s a nurse’s assistant at an assisted living home — and when she gets off, she’ll head to the church for Ramarley’s memorial.
She said she hopes to make this year’s memorial a happier one than those of previous years.
“We want to make it more happier than we were doing before,” she said. “You know, we don’t want to be sad all the time.”
“I don’t think he’d want me getting up every day crying and you know, worrying a lot,” she continued. “We want to try to make it a little happier, and let people know we’re still fighting, we’re still here, we’re not gonna lay down and wallow in our tears and just be sad all the time. He wasn’t that type of person. He was a happy kid.”
