Shakuwra Dabre, the mother of the man who fatally shot two New York City officers in Brooklyn before taking his own life, said she is “deeply sorry” for what happened but also expressed that she is “torn” about losing her son.
It was a tough reality for Dabre who became a grieving mother at the same time as she discovered her son had taken two innocent lives, NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
“I was so torn when I saw him on that stretcher,” she told the NY Daily News. “Then I found out too that he did that and I was horrified.”
Dabre’s son garnered national media attention after shooting two officers execution style shortly after posting a grim message on social media warning of the imminent attack.
Since then officers have been on high alert and civil rights activists have been creating a clear division between the attack of a mentally unstable man and the actions of protesters who are fighting for legitimate change in America.
In the midst of all this, Dabre was discovering, simultaneously, that her son was a murderer and that he was now dead.
“I am still deeply sorry about what happened at the hands of my son,” the 54-year-old mother told the NY Daily News. “And please accept my deepest condolences, sincerely. As a mother now I hurt for the loss of my son. Just like they’re hurting for the loss of their sons.”
Dabre said she was online when she saw the photo of her son being carried away on a gurney on Saturday.
“I pulled out my laptop and I went online and I saw his body and I knew he was dead when I looked at it,” she said. “I knew when I saw it. He was gone. I knew it was my son. And that’s how I found out.”
The estranged mother of Brinsley’s child was the one who alerted Dabre that the 28-year-old was in trouble.
Dabre had no idea it would be something this serious.
She said that Brinsley tried to commit suicide before when he was only 13 years old and since then he has had many psychological and emotional problems that caused him to be institutionalized for quite some time.
Now, there are three deaths that will plague Dabre’s memory forever.
“Unfortunately, this situation happened and it culminated in the end of his life and the tragic loss of two innocent police officers,” she continued.
Brinsley’s rampage started out in Baltimore where he shot his ex-girlfriend, Shaneka Thompson, who once talked him out of committing suicide in the past.
JUSTIN LANE/EPA
Thompson is expected to live but she would turn out to be the only survivor of Brinsley’s bloody plot.
On Instagram he boasted that he would soon be putting “wings on pigs today” and said that if the police “take one of ours…let’s take 2 of theirs.”
Along with the caption he posted an image of a silver gun—the same gun he would later user to commit the murders.
That afternoon he approached the two NYPD officers and shot them execution style.
Officers were in pursuit of him but Brinsley had his own plans for what would become of him following the shooting.
He made his way to a busy subway station and shot himself in the head.
Despite the eerie social media post that came hours before the attack on the officers, there is no evidence that truly connects Brinsley’s actions to a push for justice in the midst of the deaths of unarmed Black men Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
While he used the men’s names in the post as hashtags, the Garner family along with leaders in the Black community made it clear that such actions were not in alignment with their war against institutional racism.
