For nearly a decade, Nicole Gardner would tense up any time someone asked: “How many kids do you have?”
Her daughter Ronique Gardner Williams was shot and killed in 2015 while riding in a car in Richmond, California. Seven years later, her eldest son, Damon Gardner Isles, died following a seizure, but he had also been shot years before in Boston. Though her children died under different circumstances, they shared one tragic commonality: neither had received justice as the victims of gun violence.